In our latest podcast, (left to right) editors Henry
See, Scott Ogrin, and Joe Quinn discuss the Cathars
with a special guest.
For our final podcast of 2005, the editors of Signs
of the Times discuss the Cathars and life in the Languedoc
(southern France) in the 11th and 12th centuries with
Pierre, a friend from Marseille. The Cathars were an
integral part of the flourishing culture of the Languedoc
until the Catholic Church began the crusade and the Inquisition
in the early 13th century that wiped them out and brought
the southwest of France under the control of the Frankish
kings of the north.
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questions for the Signs Team or would like to suggest
a topic for future Podcast discussion, you can write
us at:
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After the release of the QFG P3nt4gon Str!ke Flash Animation on August 23rd, 2004, a veritable onslaught of new articles were published that sought to dismiss the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory. One such article, that is frequently referenced by certain '9/11 reseachers' was authored by a member of the forum at the "Above Top Secret" (ATS) website. Interestingly, the article was written just a few weeks after the release of the P3nt4gon Str!ke Flash animation, which by then, was winging its way around the world and into the inboxes of millions of ordinary citizens. Perhaps you were one of them...
The claim that promoters of the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory were doing immense damage to the truth/accountability movement was raised in Mike Ruppert's book Crossing the Rubicon. In a stunning piece of warped logic, Ruppert claimed that, while he is quite convinced that it was not Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, he chose not to talk about or deal with the subject as part of his overall case for conspiracy because of the "implications". According to Ruppert, the "implications" are that anyone that suggests that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, is then forced to answer the question as to what actually happened to Flight 77. If that's the case, then we better just wrap up the whole 9/11 Truth Movement and go home and have a beer.
Ruppert balks at the idea of offering an answer to this question to his readers because, he claims, most people would be unable to accept it, and, he suggests, 9/11 researchers serve only to alienate the public support that they wish to attract by stretching the boundaries of the collective belief system. What Ruppert doesn't explain is why any member of the public would happily accept that U.S. government officials participated in the slaughter of the passengers on Flights 11 and 175 and the occupants of the WTC towers (as he details in his book) yet would be unable to accept the idea that the same government officials played a part in disposing of the passgengers of Flight 77 in a much less imaginative way. Llet's be honest here, in the context of 9/11 being the work of a faction of the US government and military, the answer to the question as to what happened to Flight 77 if it didn't hit the Pentagon, is quite obvious - Flight 77 and its occupants were flown to a specific destination and “disposed of” by the conspirators. That's pretty simple; cut and dried; no need for much stretching there! But, for some reason, Ruppert (and others affected by this paramoralism) seems to think that killing thousands of citizens by crashing airplanes is easier to accept than cold bloodedly murdering them "in person," as it were.
Since Ruppert's declaration about the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory, many other "9/11 researchers", such as Mark Rabinowitz and Jim Hoffman , have seized upon Ruppert's idea and even expanded upon it by suggesting that the "no planers" are actually government agents trying to discredit the REAL 9/11 researchers with the 'kooky' "no plane" theory.
In order to really understand the insidiousness of this patronising claim that the public could not accept the implications of the idea that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon, let's look at the "evidence" as presented by the ATS member that it really was Flight 77 that impacted the Pentagon that bright September morn.
First, however, I would like a few observations about 9/11 research in general.
Comment:Click here to read the rest of our new article!
Bomb blasts in London, an earthquake in Pakistan, an American city laid waste by a hurricane - one disaster followed another with devastating loss of life. 'Peace' brought mayhem and slaughter to Iraq as well as two elections. Yet 2005 will be remembered with smiles of pleasure, too - for the glimmerings of unity over global warming and, in England, a thrilling Ashes victory. Decca Aitkenhead tells the story of the year.
At first most Londoners assumed that it was a glitch in the system. The mobile phone networks all seemed to have jammed. People shrugged, glanced at their phones, and redialled. For commuters arriving at King's Cross to find the Piccadilly line suspended, the inconvenience was so familiar that no one would even think to wonder why. When the entire underground service was suspended at 9.33am, transport chiefs blamed a power surge. British Transport police were still clinging to this wistful explanation at 9.40am. Only at 9.47am, when the top deck of a number 30 bus in Tavistock Square exploded into shreds of blood and steel, did the unbelievable become undeniable. When it finally came, the most widely predicted of terrorist attacks had taken the capital by surprise.
But there was something unreal about a subterranean atrocity that none of us could see. Long-lens rolling news cameras remained trained on the decapitated number 30, mesmerised by the only televisual image of a disaster unfolding through muddled eyewitness accounts, conflicting police statements and the incessant wail of sirens. As the hours passed, the story slowly pieced itself together from a jigsaw of pictures - bleeding and blackened commuters helping each other into ambulances, shaken surgeons interviewed on crowded hospital steps, Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Ian Blair fielding unanswerable questions. Only when the evening rush hour turned into a human tide of millions making their way home on foot did we really grasp what had happened deep beneath our feet.
As mobile phone camera footage of the underground carnage slowly surfaced, and the survivors began to tell their stories, the stark figures - 52 dead, more than 700 injured - assumed names and faces. At a public level, there was a grim inevitability to much of what followed. Headline writers wasted no time in branding July 7 "our 9/11", and the established rituals of a national response were duly observed - the vigil in Trafalgar Square, the messages of support from dignitaries, the book of condolences, the two-minute silence. Tony Blair and Ken Livingstone, perhaps mindful of comparisons with President Bush and Mayor Giuliani's 9/11 performances, seemed locked in battle to coin the definitive 7/7 soundbite. "When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated," Blair declared. Livingstone condemned the "cowardly terrorist attack" and congratulated Londoners for responding "calmly and courageously". The great British virtues of phlegm and the Blitz spirit were widely invoked, and could be reasserted online by registering with a new website, werenotafraid.com.
But we were quite unprepared for the discovery that the four suicide bombers had been British. Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Hussain, 18, were both described as cricket lovers; Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, was a primary school teaching assistant for children with special needs. All three came from religiously moderate families in working-class Yorkshire. Jermaine Lindsay, 19 and Jamaican-born, had only recently converted to Islam, and lived near Luton with his pregnant girlfriend. There were no ritualised comforts available to explain why young British men would choose to blow themselves up on crowded tube trains. Police stood guard outside mosques during Friday prayers, as reports spread of arson attacks and violent assaults on Muslims.
When the mobile phone networks went down again two Thursdays later, everybody knew what it meant. This time, the frenzy of telephone calls brought no news of tragedy, but the fact that a second round of suicide bombs had failed to detonate did little to diminish the fear. A suicide bomber had killed five in Turkey five days earlier; three days later, the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh was struck by three explosions, killing 66. When an innocent Brazilian electrician called Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police in front of passengers on a tube train in Stockwell, a whole new cause for anxiety opened up.
The fragile unity inspired by 7/7 was slowly beginning to fracture. Already, Livingstone and Charles Kennedy had ventured cautious connections between the bombings and Britain's Middle East policy, and the Blitz analogy was quickly coming to look less telling than comparisons with Iraq, where between 7/7 and 21/7 alone more than 150 Iraqis had lost their lives. A study by Iraq Body Count published in July put total civilian loss of life since the invasion at 25,000.
Nobody knows why the bombers chose July 7 to attack, but there had been an unmistakable symbolism in Blair's first public statement that day. Speaking from the G8 summit in Gleneagles, the prime minister was flanked by seven other world leaders. This was the year when the world grew very small, countries no longer insulated by national boundaries but linked into a global network of cause and effect. At Blair's side stood Bush. Like almost every major event to take place in the world in 2005, the bombing of London could not escape connection with the war in Iraq.
In that country the year began unexpectedly auspiciously. Insurgents killed 44 in the first four days, among them the governor of Baghdad, but at the end of the month the country's first democratic elections passed off in what we had come to think of as almost peaceful circumstances - just 35 deaths. Al-Qaida's man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had threatened "fierce war on this evil principle of democracy" and branded as "infidel" any Iraqi trying to cast a ballot, yet more than 60% of the electorate voted. Washington and Downing Street were jubilant, raising the surprising possibility that their policy of exporting democracy like Coca-Cola might, after all, come to pass.
It is easy to forget now, but there was a time during the early part of the year when even critics of the war began to reconsider their contempt for the neocons' missionary zeal. On the eve of the year, Viktor Yushchenko had swept into power in Ukraine on an "orange revolution", overturning a fraudulent election result. In January, Mahmoud Abbas, the US-friendly candidate, was elected Palestinian leader, and within a month he had signed a truce with Israel's leader, Ariel Sharon. The Valentine's Day assassination of Rafik Hariri in Beirut prompted mass demonstrations, forcing the pro-Syrian government to resign and Syria to withdraw its 14,000 troops from Lebanon. Sharon announced that Israel would withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
But if Iraq was supposed to be a "beacon of democracy", by the summer its light had faded to a flicker. The new prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was as much a prisoner of the fortified Green Zone as his unelected predecessors, and suicide bombers struck almost daily. In May and June alone, more than 1,330 Iraqis were killed, and on a bloody day in August 648 Shia worshippers were trampled to death on a bridge in Baghdad after rumours of a suicide bomber spread through the crowd. On most days, casualty figures that would make headlines had they occurred anywhere else were relegated to footnotes in British news bulletins. Al-Jazeera broadcast a video message by one of the London bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, explicitly linking the attack to Iraq: "Until we feel secure, you will be our targets. Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture ... we will not stop this fight."
By the time Iraqis had voted again in September, for their tortuously negotiated constitution, even Washington could only just bring itself to trumpet the endorsement as another triumph.
The year was framed by two earthquakes - the first producing a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that on Boxing Day 2004 killed at least 300,000 and galvanised the world. Catastrophe stretched from coast to coast, but even from the horror of bloated corpses and drowned towns, redemption of sorts seemed to emerge. The global impulse to give appeared limitless - money and volunteers poured in - and for a while the world congratulated itself on the unsuspected depths of its beneficence. When an earthquake struck Pakistan this autumn, 80,000 died immediately - and the same number would perish again, relief agencies warned, if money and supplies didn't arrive quickly. They didn't, and survivors froze to death. Some aid workers blamed compassion fatigue, but others suggested Pakistan's problem was its lack of tropical beaches, on which wealthy westerners could picture people such as themselves sunbathing when tragedy struck.
London celebrated its Olympic win over Paris in July, and for a few heady weeks that same month, Make Poverty History sounded less a slogan than a credible ambition, with its finger-clicking celebrities and pure white wristbands. All we had to do was applaud Pink Floyd for reassembling at Live8 in Hyde Park, then get ourselves to Scotland to notify G8 of the plan. Even the French were welcome; why didn't they just row across the Channel, Bob Geldof suggested, and join the party? But all the while, more than three million were starving in Niger, an event that received rather less media attention than Pete Doherty and Elton John's Hyde Park kiss. The G8 summit wound up with a mealy-mouthed commitment to offer essentially what had already been pledged.
The general election improbably proved even less memorable than its predecessor. The result was never in any real doubt, and the curious sense of non-event was enhanced by Labour's novel strategy of conducting its campaign in secret. Citing security concerns, the party refused to disclose Blair's itinerary, so political correspondents had to fly around the country hoping to bump into him. The Tories were more visible, due to their faintly sinister billboard campaign, "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" On polling day it transpired that we weren't, but the election results produced the odd impression that all three parties had lost.
The enduring image of the night was not Blair's triumph, but his discomfort during a speech by a rival candidate in his constituency whose son had been killed in Iraq. "I hope in my heart," said Reg Keys, "that one day the prime minister will be able to say sorry." Michael Howard had cut the government majority by more than half, and still resigned. Blair returned to Downing Street with a majority of 67 and a promise to "listen to the people" - but all 82-year-old Walter Wolfgang had to shout at the Labour party conference four months later was "Nonsense!" and he was bundled out and questioned under the anti-terrorism act.
And six months after his re-election, Blair was facing calls for his resignation after losing the vote on 90-day detention without charge, and the Tories were anointing their first leader in more than a decade to look like a winner. The Conservative leadership race turned out to be far more engaging than the general election - we had suspense, live debate, even class-A drugs.
But Labour did provide us with by far the most diverting political sideshow of the year. David Blunkett returned to the cabinet in May, less than six months after resigning over Nannygate. One of the speediest rehabilitations on record soon became one of the most farcical. It can't have been pleasant for the secretary of state to find his private life the subject of not one but two popular comedies - a play called Who's The Daddy? and Channel 4's A Very Social Secretary - but when he took up with a younger woman he'd met in Annabel's nightclub, he appeared to be writing the sequel himself. The final fatal revelation of an undisclosed directorship in - of all things - a DNA-testing business suggested a streak of comic genius hitherto unsuspected in the minister.
Northern Ireland ended 2005 more promisingly than it began. In February IRA members murdered Robert McCartney - a senseless killing that incurred the wrath of his formidable sisters, and plunged the peace process back into doubt. The IRA's refusal to turn in the murderers, offering instead to shoot them, made a mockery of Sinn Féin's pretensions to legitimacy, and subjected its leadership to the indignity of being shunned even by Edward Kennedy. The general election in May saw off another architect of the Good Friday agreement, David Trimble, transferring unionist power to the unreconstructed Reverend Ian Paisley. But in July the IRA suddenly announced a formal end to the armed struggle. Weapons were decommissioned, British watchtowers were dismantled and, though power-sharing remained suspended, hopes of progress were resurrected.
Dreams of a European constitution fared less well. Referendums were held across the continent, bringing a resounding Spanish yes vote in February, to the excitement of federalists and the alarm of Downing Street, which would assume presidency of the EU in July. How Blair would have handled a British referendum is anybody's guess, but he was rescued for once by the French, whose no vote in May was quickly followed by a similar result in the Netherlands. We were back to bickering about the budget, the Common Agricultural Policy and Britain's rebate.
Domestic politics produced some long-awaited cultural adjustments, but their impact remains unclear. Foxhunting was abolished in February, but this has not deterred enthusiasts from continuing to enjoy what looks uncannily like the outlawed sport. The proposed ban on public smoking included a last-minute caveat excluding pubs and clubs that don't serve food - an inventive interpretation of a blanket ban. Having complained for decades about our licensing laws, the public lost its nerve when the opportunity to drink after 11pm drew near, and the moral panic about binge drinking still didn't subside with the news that only a handful of 24-hour licences had been granted, most to shops and supermarkets.
Sports fans proved themselves to be adaptable. Liverpool's comeback to win the Champions League final had been mesmerising, but England's Ashes victory provoked a mass defection from football to cricket, hastily resurrected as our "real" national game, the wholesome charms of Freddie Flintoff and Michael Vaughan comparing favourably with the decadence of overpaid footballers. Wayne Rooney couldn't stop swearing, Paul Gascoigne couldn't stop drinking, and there were days during Faria Alam's industrial tribunal when the FA headquarters sounded like the Playboy mansion. An American tycoon bought out Manchester United, a Russian tycoon basically bought the Premiership, and the more Chelsea kept winning, the louder the grumbles grew.
When Sven's men lost 1-0 to Northern Ireland, the familiar managerial witch-hunt reached a new fever pitch - only to be forgotten as soon as England drew an apparently easy ride in the World Cup group stages for Germany next year. Suddenly the seven-figure salaries and sexual improprieties were but a distant memory. Yet again, England expects.
It was an excellent year for our other national sport of royal watching. Things started promisingly with Prince Harry's ill-advised choice of costume for a fancy dress party - a Nazi uniform, complete with swastika - and got even better when, during a photo shoot on the slopes of Klosters, Prince Charles failed to realise his comments would be picked up by microphones. "I can't bear that man," Charles muttered to his sons. "I mean, he's so awful, he really is" - an opinion of BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell that was promptly broadcast around the world.
Charles's second royal wedding couldn't match his first for glamour, but its entertainment value was peerless - the doubts over its legality, its relocation from Windsor Castle to the local guildhall, then the Queen's decision not to go, and its 11th-hour postponement due to the pope's inconveniently timed death. Satirists were delighted to discover that John Paul II's equally conservative successor had once been a member of the Hitler Youth.
Nothing fictional on television quite matched the absurdity of such moments. Little Britain's popularity probably had something to do with the lack of competition, Ricky Gervais's Extras being amusing, but no rival to The Office. The episode that sent up Ross Kemp's hard-man credentials became considerably funnier with hindsight, however, when his wife was arrested for giving him a thick lip.
When President Bush was sworn in for a second term on January 20, he pledged himself to "the expansion of freedom in all the world". He deployed the words "free" or "freedom" no fewer than 25 times in 20 minutes. From the shining grandeur of that re-inauguration day, how could he have guessed what the year would bring?
At first it was just Cindy Sheehan and her antiwar protests at the gate of his Texan ranch. "I'm not giving up the mission," Bush declared. "We're doing the right thing." Vice-president Cheney even claimed the insurgency was "in its last throes". But American troops kept dying, and opinion was turning; by late summer, Bush's approval rating had tumbled to little more than 40%, the lowest of any second-term president since Nixon. Nearly two-thirds of Americans wanted the troops home. "In the most patriotic state I can imagine," a South Carolina senator told the commander of US forces in Iraq, "people are beginning to question. I think we have a chronic problem on our hands."
Saddam Hussein's trial opened in October and quickly descended into such chaos that the UN declared it would never satisfy international standards. Assassinations of legal counsel repeatedly halted proceedings, and when the court did convene, Saddam appeared to consider himself in charge. When the judge offered to relay to the defendant's American guards his complaints about treatment, Saddam exploded. "I don't want you to tell them! I want you to order them. You are an Iraqi, you are sovereign and they are foreigners, invaders and occupiers." Iraqis looked on in disbelief. "I can't believe that this is what they are calling the trial of the century," marvelled one. "It's weak, it's unprofessional, it's as though nothing was planned."
What possessed the US president to nominate his family lawyer for the Supreme Court remains one of the year's abiding mysteries - although Harriet Miers's fawning fan mail to "the best governor ever" and to his "cool" wife could have had something to do with it. The subsequent uproar and her humiliated withdrawal in late October would have been the nadir of the president's year, had it not been for the indictment seven days later of Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The first serving White House aide to be indicted in 130 years, Cheney's chief of staff was charged on five counts relating to a cover-up over the naming of CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose husband had criticised the invasion of Iraq. Bush's own chief strategist, Karl Rove, may yet be charged.
The defining moment of Bush's fall from grace came not in the courts or the polls, however, but hurtling in from the Gulf of Mexico at 175mph. The world watched in disbelief as 21st-century Americans clung to New Orleans rooftops, pleading with TV cameras: "We're dying"; "I haven't had water or eaten for three days"; "Doesn't anyone care?" America looked like war-torn Africa - destitute black people begging for water, corpses littering the streets, the stench of effluent. "I'm 62," said one CNN newsman. "I remember the riots in Watts; I remember the earthquake in San Francisco. I have never, ever seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation. Where the hell is the water for these people? What is going on? This is a disgrace." At the height of the crisis, officials speculated about 10,000 dead. The actual figure was around 8,600 lower.
Hurricane Katrina ripped away the US's mask of racial equality. "I know they're saying, get out of town," an elderly black woman despaired, "but I don't have any way to get out. If you don't have no money, you can't go." Even the subtleties of news coverage betrayed ugly undertones; the few remaining whites in town "found" food, whereas the blacks were "looting". A natural disaster had become a human abomination. Nor could it escape the political shadow of Iraq. Why, Americans demanded, was the National Guard so depleted by foreign commitments that it couldn't protect its own people? How could the administration spend $6bn a month on the war, and not find sandwiches for Americans starving in the Superdome? Petrol prices soared, illuminating America's dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
The most troubling question raised by Katrina, however, was one to which more and more of us feared we knew the answer. Was the very oil for which we would go to war now destroying the planet? The number of "natural" disasters this year seemed implausibly high to put down to natural causes. In the Caribbean, as well as Katrina, there were Hurricanes Rita and Wilma. In August, floods deluged central and eastern Europe, killing 25 in Romania alone. In September a typhoon in China killed at least 50; a month later in Guatemala, a tropical storm swept away whole villages in a mudslide, killing more than 650. Even in Britain, three died during a winter storm over Carlisle, while a summer storm left thousands without power.
This still wasn't the year when the world took meaningful action to halt climate change. We kept buying SUVs, China and India became world-class carbon emissions producers, and the 157 countries that signed an extension of the Kyoto treaty did not include the biggest polluter, the US. However, when the US delegation walked out of the UN climate change conference in December - over the wording of a draft statement demanding international cooperation - it was forced to walk back in and sign the document. Celebration was short-lived in southern England, as an immense black cloud spread out from a fire in a Hertfordshire oil depot.
The one glimmer of hope came from Israel, whose withdrawal from Gaza in September was completed more peacefully than many had predicted. But opinion was divided on Sharon's intentions and prospects after he abandoned Likud and founded a new party to fight the forthcoming elections. "I'm more hopeful about the prospects for a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians than I have been at any time in the last four-and-a-half years," enthused Jack Straw, but others have described Sharon's plan as not a two-state solution but a one-and-a-half-state solution. "He's getting out of Gaza because he can't sustain 8,000 settlers with half his army protecting them," the first President Bush's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, warned Condoleezza Rice. "Then, when he's out, he will have an Israel that he can control and a Palestinian state atomised enough that it can't be a problem." But the fragility of any political plan was underlined when Sharon suffered a mild stroke in mid-December.
While the future for Israel is unknowable, it's safe to say the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's wish to see it "wiped from the map" is unlikely to be granted. But the hardliner's election in July has escalated tension in the region. In September, Ahmadinejad told the UN that Iran's "inalienable right" to nuclear power was for peaceful purposes, but that if his country were to suffer sanctions or invasion, it would "reconsider its entire approach to the nuclear question". As sanctions are certainly under consideration, and some suspect Washington of contemplating a military attack, this was not reassuring.
It's hard to say which is more frightening - Tehran's nuclear intentions or the possibility that we could be gearing up for another Middle Eastern war. Anyone seeking evidence of a more conciliatory White House will not have been comforted by revelations of CIA flights moving detainees to unspecified jails in far-flung countries. Secretary of state Rice claimed these "renditions" were a "vital tool" in the war on terror. But she also claimed that the US "does not tolerate, permit or condone torture under any circumstances" - which barely squares with the CIA's use of "waterboarding", in which suspects are plunged into water until they almost drown. By the end of the year, the outcry was such that the White House had to agree to a law, put forward by Senator John McCain, specifically banning torture of terror suspects: a message to the world, said McCain, "that the United States is not like the terrorists". Otherwise, what it would mean to win the war on terror?
In a year when the planet seemed to shrink, it was perhaps unsurprising that we should end it worrying about a deadly disease spreading unstoppably from country to country. Cases of H5N1 had been reported in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan, China, Tibet, Russia, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Turkey, Greece, Romania - apparently coming ever closer to the UK. Even though just 69 humans have died of bird flu in Asia to date, Britain's chief medical officer has warned of 50,000 British deaths, with an "absolute upper limit" of 700,000. Avian flu may yet become the story of 2006, and demote to global trivia the dramas of 2005. If not, it will have been just one more nervy jitter of a world growing frightened of itself.
It's too early to tell if the new year will turn out good or bad. But a surprising number of facts about it can be stated with something close to certainty. Ed Caesar presents a selection
- Next year, for the first time, more than 50 per cent of the world's population will live in towns and cities rather than in the countryside
- 30bn tonnes of greenhouse gases will be discharged
- There will be more than 2bn mobile phones in use
- More than 65m new cars will be made
- 22bn rolls of toilet paper will be used
- Twenty-four nations are due to hold national elections
- The sea will rise by 2mm
- Around 130m babies will be born, and around 57m people will die
- At least 35 nations will experience armed conflict
- On 29 March, a total eclipse of the Sun will be visible from over half the Earth
- More than 1m people will die from acute malaria
- Around 2.7trn insects will be accidentally eaten by humans
- NASA will attempt to launch its first mission to Pluto
- Manuel Noriega will become eligible for parole
- More than 3m people will die from HIV/Aids; a further 3m will become newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa
- At least 25,000 sq km of Amazonian rain forest will be destroyed
- The global internet community will reach 1.21bn
- Gas and electricity bills in the UK will increase
- 292bn cans or bottles of Coke will be sold
- Tesco will open 80 new hypermarkets and 128 new supermarkets worldwide
- Russia will assume the presidency of G8
- One person in five will have less than $1 a day to live on
- 50,000 species will become extinct
- More than 1bn people will watch the final of football's World Cup on 9 July
- At least 13m people will be refugees
- Smoking in public places will become illegal in Scotland
- Austria, and then Finland, will take over the EU presidency
- More than 1m people will commit suicide; a further 10m will try but fail
- Roughly a third of the planet's population will be under 18
- Kofi Annan will step down after 10 years as Secretary-General of the UN
- Ten million people - including 4.5m children - will die from hunger or hunger-related diseases
- More than 1m working computers will be thrown away
- 39bn barrels of oil will be pumped
- The UK will produce around 400m tonnes of waste, including 30m tonnes of domestic waste
- Around £350bn will be spent on advertising
- Kenneth Lay, formerly of Enron, and Conrad Black, former owner of the Telegraph Group, will both stand trial
- More than 900 films will be made in Bollywood
- Al Jazeera will launch its satellite service, Al Jazeera International, in Europe, North America and Asia
- Around $1trn will be spent on arms Comment: That's pretty sad when you consider that 20% of the world's population has less than $1 a day to live on...
- Roughly 530,000 military servicemen and women will be deployed globally; 70 per cent of them American
- Patras, in south-west Greece, will be European City of Culture
- Over 100,000 new book titles will be published in the UK
- More than 4m British people will be on weight-reducing diets
- One person in five will be Chinese
- At least 6,150 square miles of Arctic sea-ice will disappear
- The average Briton will spend more than 400 hours shopping
Police are on a high state of alert in a predominantly Christian province of East Timor, Indonesia, after an Islamic group threatened an attack on local churches to coincide with New Year's Eve celebrations.
According to Asia News, a cellphone text message received Wednesday by radio Timor Voice read: "On New Year Eve, 31 churches in [East Tenggara Timor's] capital of Kupang shall receive the same bomb blasts as Bali did last October. [Signed:] From the Jemaah Islamiiyah Chief of the eastern region, Jihad for the Great Prophet Muhammad."
Provincial Police Chief Robert Bellarminus Sadarum said the threat must be considered "a serious and imminent danger" for the whole Christian community.
But the local chapter of the Indonesian Ulemas Council strongly denied claims the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiiyah is operating in the province.
Nevertheless, according to Asia News, security officials have deployed about 2,250 soldiers and police officers, and Sadarum said "tighter security will be imposed around churches on New Year Eve."
Asia News said Indonesia's Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, Widodo Adi Sutjipto, has warned of possible terrorist attacks in the next week.
His office is probing possible links between terrorism and recent bank robberies in the cities of Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Tangerang.
Proceeds from the robberies could finance terrorist activities, he said, to make up for a shortfall in foreign contributions.
The 2002 Bali bombing was preceded by a major robbery, noted retired Gen. Ansyaad Mbai, who now heads the Anti-Terrorism Unit in the Political, Legal and Security Affairs Ministry.
As WorldNetDaily reported in 2001, more than 2,000 people died in three years of clashes in Indonesia's Central Sulawesi province before a peace agreement was reached between Muslim and Christian leaders.
An Islamic terrorist group called Laskar Jihad threatened to eliminate Christians from the region but was held off by government troops.
Federal prosecutors and lawyers for lobbyist Jack Abramoff are putting the finishing touches on a plea deal that could be announced early next week, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
The plea agreement would secure the Republican lobbyist's testimony against several members of Congress who received favors from him or his clients.
Abramoff and a former partner were indicted in Miami in August on charges of conspiracy and fraud for allegedly lying about their assets to help secure financing to purchase a fleet of gambling boats.
Pressure has been intensifying on Abramoff to strike a deal with prosecutors since former partner Adam Kidan pleaded guilty earlier this month to fraud and conspiracy in connection with the 2000 SunCruz boat deal.
Abramoff's cooperation would be a boon to an ongoing Justice Department investigation of congressional corruption, possibly helping prosecutors build criminal cases against up to 20 lawmakers of both parties and their staff members.
The people, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the talks, said the lawyers spoke by phone with U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck, giving him an update on the plea negotiations.
Huck scheduled another status conference for Tuesday afternoon, but the deal could be completed before then, the people said. Abramoff could sign the plea agreement and exchange it with prosecutors via fax over the weekend, they said.
Details of where Abramoff will enter his plea are still being worked out. Abramoff's lawyers have indicated that they want the plea to be made in U.S. District Court in Washington, one person said.
If that happens, Abramoff would plead guilty to charges contained in a criminal information _ a filing made by a federal prosecutor with a defendant's permission that bypasses action by a grand jury.
The lawyers could then apprise Huck about the plea and its effect on the case in Miami.
Abramoff and Kidan were charged with concocting a fake $23 million wire transfer to make it appear they were putting their own money into the SunCruz deal. Two lenders agreed to provide $60 million in financing for the purchase based on that false wire transfer, according to prosecutors.
For months, prosecutors in Washington have focused on whether Abramoff defrauded his Indian tribal clients of millions of dollars and used improper influence on members of Congress.
In a five-year span ending in early 2004, tribes represented by the lobbyist contributed millions of dollars in casino income to congressional campaigns, often routing the money through political action committees for conservative lawmakers who opposed gambling.
Abramoff also provided trips, sports skybox fundraisers, golf fees, frequent meals, entertainment and jobs for lawmakers' relatives and aides.
Kidan and Abramoff bought SunCruz from Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, who was slain in 2001 in a gangland-style hit in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Investigators say Boulis and Kidan were fighting for control of SunCruz; Kidan has denied any involvement in Boulis' death.
Three men were arrested in September on murder charges in Boulis' killing and are awaiting trial.
Michael Scanlon, another former Abramoff associate, pleaded guilty in November in a separate case in Washington.
Scanlon said he helped Abramoff and Kidan buy SunCruz by persuading Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, to insert comments into the Congressional Record that were "calculated to pressure the then-owner to sell on terms favorable" to Abramoff and Kidan.
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
December 31, 2005
The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money's origins.
Two former associates of Edwin A. Buckham, the congressman's former chief of staff and the organizer of the U.S. Family Network, said Buckham told them the funds came from Russian oil and gas executives. Abramoff had been working closely with two such Russian energy executives on their Washington agenda, and the lobbyist and Buckham had helped organize a 1997 Moscow visit by DeLay (R-Tex.).
The former president of the U.S. Family Network said Buckham told him that Russians contributed $1 million to the group in 1998 specifically to influence DeLay's vote on legislation the International Monetary Fund needed to finance a bailout of the collapsing Russian economy.
A spokesman for DeLay, who is fighting in a Texas state court unrelated charges of illegal fundraising, denied that the contributions influenced the former House majority leader's political activities. The Russian energy executives who worked with Abramoff denied yesterday knowing anything about the million-dollar London transaction described in tax documents.
Whatever the real motive for the contribution of $1 million -- a sum not prohibited by law but extraordinary for a small, nonprofit group -- the steady stream of corporate payments detailed on the donor list makes it clear that Abramoff's long-standing alliance with DeLay was sealed by a much more extensive web of financial ties than previously known.
Records and interviews also illuminate the mixture of influence and illusion that surrounded the U.S. Family Network. Despite the group's avowed purpose, records show it did little to promote conservative ideas through grass-roots advocacy. The money it raised came from businesses with no demonstrated interest in the conservative "moral fitness" agenda that was the group's professed aim.
In addition to the million-dollar payment involving the London law firm, for example, half a million dollars was donated to the U.S. Family Network by the owners of textile companies in the Mariana Islands in the Pacific, according to the tax records. The textile owners -- with Abramoff's help -- solicited and received DeLay's public commitment to block legislation that would boost their labor costs, according to Abramoff associates, one of the owners and a DeLay speech in 1997.
A quarter of a million dollars was donated over two years by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Abramoff's largest lobbying client, which counted DeLay as an ally in fighting legislation allowing the taxation of its gambling revenue.
The records, other documents and interviews call into question the very purpose of the U.S. Family Network, which functioned mostly by collecting funds from domestic and foreign businesses whose interests coincided with DeLay's activities while he was serving as House majority whip from 1995 to 2002, and as majority leader from 2002 until the end of September.
After the group was formed in 1996, its director told the Internal Revenue Service that its goal was to advocate policies favorable for "economic growth and prosperity, social improvement, moral fitness, and the general well-being of the United States." DeLay, in a 1999 fundraising letter, called the group "a powerful nationwide organization dedicated to restoring our government to citizen control" by mobilizing grass-roots citizen support.
But the records show that the tiny U.S. Family Network, which never had more than one full-time staff member, spent comparatively little money on public advocacy or education projects. Although established as a nonprofit organization, it paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to Buckham and his lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group.
There is no evidence DeLay received a direct financial benefit, but Buckham's firm employed DeLay's wife, Christine, and paid her a salary of at least $3,200 each month for three of the years the group existed. Richard Cullen, DeLay's attorney, has said that the pay was compensation for lists Christine DeLay supplied to Buckham of lawmakers' favorite charities, and that it was appropriate under House rules and election law.
Some of the U.S. Family Network's revenue was used to pay for radio ads attacking vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in 1999; other funds were used to finance the cash purchase of a townhouse three blocks from DeLay's congressional office. DeLay's associates at the time called it "the Safe House."
DeLay made his own fundraising telephone pitches from the townhouse's second-floor master suite every few weeks, according to two former associates. Other rooms in the townhouse were used by Alexander Strategy Group, Buckham's newly formed lobbying firm, and Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), DeLay's leadership committee.
They paid modest rent to the U.S. Family Network, which occupied a single small room in the back.
'Red Flags' on Tax Returns
Nine months before the June 25, 1998, payment of $1 million by the London law firm James & Sarch Co., as recorded in the tax forms, Buckham and DeLay were the dinner guests in Moscow of Marina Nevskaya and Alexander Koulakovsky of the oil firm Naftasib, which in promotional literature counted as its principal clients the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior.
Buckham, a graduate of the University of Tennessee, had worked for DeLay since 1995, after serving in other congressional offices and then as executive director of the Republican Study Committee, a group of fiscally conservative House members.
Their other dining companions were Abramoff and Washington lawyer Julius "Jay" Kaplan, whose lobbying firms collected $440,000 in 1997 and 1998 from an obscure Bahamian firm that helped organize and indirectly pay for the DeLay trip, in conjunction with the Russians. In disclosure forms, the stated purpose of the lobbying was to promote the policies of the Russian government.
Kaplan and British lawyer David Sarch had worked together previously. (Sarch died a month before the $1 million was paid.) Buckham's trip with DeLay was his second to Moscow that year for meetings with Nevskaya and Koulakovsky; on the earlier one, the DeLay aide attracted media attention by returning through Paris aboard the Concorde, a $5,500 flight.
Former Abramoff associates and documents in the hands of federal prosecutors state that Nevskaya and Koulakovsky sought Abramoff's help at the time in securing various favors from the U.S. government, including congressional earmarks or federal grants for their modular-home construction firm near Moscow and the construction of a fossil-fuel plant in Israel. None appears to have been obtained by their firm.
Former DeLay employees say Koulakovsky and Nevskaya met with him on multiple occasions. The Russians also frequently used Abramoff's skyboxes at local sports stadiums -- as did Kaplan, according to sources and a 2001 e-mail Abramoff wrote to another client.
Three sources familiar with Abramoff's activities on their behalf say that the two Russians -- who knew the head of the Russian energy giant Gazprom and had invested heavily in that firm -- partly wanted just to be seen with a prominent American politician as a way of bolstering their credibility with the Russian government and their safety on Moscow's streets. The Russian oil and gas business at the time had a Wild West character, and its executives worried about extortion and kidnapping threats. The anxieties of Nevskaya and Koulakovsky were not hidden; like many other business people, they traveled in Moscow with guards armed with machine guns.
During the DeLays' visit on Aug. 5 to 11, 1997, the congressman met with Nevskaya and was escorted around Moscow by Koulakovsky, Naftasib's general manager. DeLay told the House clerk that the trip's sponsor was the National Center for Public Policy Research, but multiple sources told The Post that his expenses were indirectly reimbursed by the Russian-connected Bahamian company.
DeLay spokesman Kevin Madden said the principal reason for his Moscow trip was "to meet with religious leaders there." Nevskaya, in a letter this spring, said Naftasib's involvement in such trips was meant "to foster better understanding between our country and the United States" and denied that the firm was seeking protection through its U.S. contacts.
Nevskaya added in an e-mail yesterday that Naftasib and its officials were not representing the ministries of defense and interior or any other government agencies "in connection with meetings or other lobbying activities in Washington D.C. or Moscow."
A former Abramoff associate said the two executives "wanted to contribute to DeLay" and clearly had the resources to do it. At one point, Koulakovsky asked during a dinner in Moscow "what would happen if the DeLays woke up one morning" and found a luxury car in their front driveway, the former associate said. They were told the DeLays "would go to jail and you would go to jail."
The tax form states that the $1 million came by check on June 25, 1998, from "Nations Corp, James & Sarch co." The Washington Post checked with the listed executives of Texas and Florida firms that have names similar to Nations Corp, and they said they had no connection to any such payment.
James & Sarch Co. was dissolved in May 2000, but two former partners said they recalled hearing the names of the Russians at their office. Asked if the firm represented them, former partner Philip McGuirk at first said "it may ring a bell," but later he faxed a statement that he could say no more because confidentiality practices prevent him "from disclosing any information regarding the affairs of a client (or former client)."
Nevskaya said in the e-mail yesterday, however, that "neither Naftasib nor the principals you mentioned have ever been represented by a London law firm that you name as James & Sarch Co." She also said that Naftasib and its principals did not pay $1 million to the firm, and denied knowing about the transaction.
Two former Buckham associates said that he told them years ago not only that the $1 million donation was solicited from Russian oil and gas executives, but also that the initial plan was for the donation to be made via a delivery of cash to be picked up at a Washington area airport.
One of the former associates, a Frederick, Md., pastor named Christopher Geeslin who served as the U.S. Family Network's director or president from 1998 to 2001, said Buckham further told him in 1999 that the payment was meant to influence DeLay's vote in 1998 on legislation that helped make it possible for the IMF to bail out the faltering Russian economy and the wealthy investors there.
"Ed told me, 'This is the way things work in Washington,' " Geeslin said. "He said the Russians wanted to give the money first in cash." Buckham, he said, orchestrated all the group's fundraising and spending and rarely informed the board about the details. Buckham and his attorney, Laura Miller, did not reply to repeated requests for comment on this article.
The IMF funding legislation was a contentious issue in 1998. The Russian stock market fell steeply in April and May, and the government in Moscow announced on June 18 -- just a week before the $1 million check was sent by the London law firm -- that it needed $10 billion to $15 billion in new international loans.
House Republican leaders had expressed opposition through that spring to giving the IMF the money it could use for new bailouts, decrying what they described as previous destabilizing loans to other countries. The IMF and its Western funders, meanwhile, were pressing Moscow, as a condition of any loan, to increase taxes on major domestic oil companies such as Gazprom, which had earlier defaulted on billions of dollars in tax payments.
On Aug. 18, 1998, the Russian government devalued the ruble and defaulted on its treasury bills. But DeLay, appearing on "Fox News Sunday" on Aug. 30 of that year, criticized the IMF financing bill, calling the replenishment of its funds "unfortunate" because the IMF was wrongly insisting on a Russian tax increase. "They are trying to force Russia to raise taxes at a time when they ought to be cutting taxes in order to get a loan from the IMF. That's just outrageous," DeLay said.
In the end, the Russian legislature refused to raise taxes, the IMF agreed to lend the money anyway, and DeLay voted on Sept. 17, 1998, for a foreign aid bill containing new funds to replenish the IMF account. DeLay's spokesman said the lawmaker "makes decisions and sets legislative priorities based on good policy and what is best for his constituents and the country." He added: "Mr. DeLay has very firm beliefs, and he fights very hard for them."
Kaplan did not respond to repeated messages, and through a spokesman for lawyer Abbe Lowell, Abramoff declined to comment.
No legal bar exists to a $1 million donation by a foreign entity to a group such as the U.S. Family Network, according to Marcus Owens, a Washington lawyer who directed the IRS's office of tax-exempt organizations from 1990 to 2000 and who reviewed, at The Post's request, the tax returns filed by the U.S. Family Network.
But "a million dollars is a staggering amount of money to come from a foreign source" because such a donor would not be entitled to claim the tax deduction allowed for U.S. citizens, Owens said. "Giving large donations to an organization whose purposes are as ambiguous as these . . . is extraordinary. I haven't seen that before. It suggests something else is going on.
"There are any number of red flags on these returns."
Hailing Indian Tribe's Hiring of Lobbyists
Buckham and Tony Rudy were the first DeLay staff members to visit the Choctaw Reservation near Meridian, Miss., where the tribe built a 500-room hotel and a 90,000-square-foot gambling casino. Their trip from March 25 to 27, 1997, cost the Choctaws $3,000, according to statements filed with the House clerk.
DeLay, his wife and Susan Hirschman -- Buckham's successor in 1998 as chief of staff -- were the next to go. Their trip from July 31 to Aug. 2, 1998, was described on House disclosure forms as a "site review and reservation tour for charitable event," and the forms said it cost the Choctaws $6,935.
Buckham, who was then a lobbyist, arranged DeLay's trip, which included a visit to the tribe's golf course to assess it as a possible location for the lawmaker's annual charity tournament, according to a tribal source. Abramoff told the tribe he could not accompany DeLay because of a prior commitment, the source said.
One day after the DeLays departed for Washington, the U.S. Family Network registered an initial $150,000 payment made by the Choctaws, according to its tax return. The tribe made additional payments to the group totaling $100,000 on "various" dates the following year, the returns state. The Choctaws separately paid Abramoff $4.5 million for his lobbying work on their behalf in 1998 and 1999. Abramoff and his wife contributed $22,000 to DeLay's political campaigns from 1997 to 2000, according to public records.
A former Abramoff associate who is aware of the payments, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his clients, said the tribe made contributions to entities associated with DeLay because DeLay was crucial to the tribe's continuing fight against legislation to allow the taxation of Indians' gambling revenue.
An attorney for the tribe, Bryant Rogers, said the funds were meant not only to "get the message out" about the adverse tax law proposals but also to finance a campaign by Buckham's group within "the conservative base" against legislation to strip tribes of their control over Indian adoptions. "This was a group connected to the right-wing Christian movement," Rogers said. "This is Ed Buckham's connection."
In March 1999, after the tribe had paid a substantial sum directly to the U.S. Family Network, Buckham expressed his general gratitude to Abramoff in an e-mail. "I really appreciate you going to bat for us. Remember it is the first bit of money that is always the hardest, but means the most," Buckham said, according to a copy. He added: "Pray for God's wisdom. I really believe this is supposed to be what we are doing to save our team."
During this period, a fundraising letter on the U.S. Family Network stationery was sent to residents of Alabama, announcing a petition drive to promote a cause of interest to Abramoff's Indian gambling clients in Mississippi and Louisiana, including the Choctaw casino that drew many customers from Alabama: the blocking of a rival casino proposed by the Poarch Creek Indians on their land in Alabama.
"The American family is under attack from all sides: crime, drugs, pornography, and one of the least talked about but equally as destructive -- gambling," said the group's letter, which was signed by then-Rep. Bob Riley (R), now the Alabama governor. "We need your help today . . . to prevent the Poarch Creek Indians from building casinos in Alabama."
Asked about the letter, Rogers said "none of us have seen" it and "the tribe's contributions have nothing to do with it." A spokesman for Riley said that he could not recall the circumstances behind the letter, but that he has long opposed any expansion of gambling in Alabama.
DeLay, meanwhile, saluted Choctaw chief Philip Martin in the Congressional Record on Jan. 3, 2001, citing "all he has done to further the cause of freedom." DeLay also attached to his remarks an editorial that hailed the tribe's gambling income and its "hiring [of] quality lobbyists."
Throughout this period, the U.S. Family Network was paying a monthly fee of at least $10,000 to Buckham and Alexander Strategy Group for general "consulting," according to a former Buckham associate and a copy of the contract. While DeLay's wife drew a monthly salary from the lobbying firm, she did not work at its offices in the townhouse on Capitol Hill, according to former Buckham associates.
Neither the House nor the Federal Election Commission bars the payment of corporate funds to spouses through consulting firms or political action committees, but the spouses must perform real work for reasonable wages.
"Anytime you [as a congressman] hire your child or spouse, it raises questions as to whether this is a throwback to the time when people used campaigns and government jobs to enrich their families," said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group, and a former general counsel of the FEC.
Research editor Lucy Shackelford; researchers Alice Crites, Madonna Lebling, Karl Evanzz and Meg Smith; and research database editor Derek Willis contributed to this report.
The massive warrantless spying campaign against people living inside the U.S. which was authorized and ordered by President Bush and is only now coming to light has angered Americans across the political spectrum.
Now it appears that besides massively violating the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure, this illegal spying may have put the U.S. at risk by undermining the prosecution of possible terror suspects.
By illegally snooping on people's email and phone conversations, without first making a showing to a judge of some probable cause for the monitoring, the administration has opened the door for defense attorneys to seek new trials for their clients based upon a claim of improperly obtained evidence. Other cases that have yet to be brought to trial may end up being thrown out on the same grounds.
"The infection of these cases by the NSA spying scandal raises the spying to a new level," says John Bonifaz, a constitutional law expert, founder of the organization AfterDowningStreet.org, and author of the book Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush.
"What this means is that George Bush, by violating the rules on domestic surveillance by the NSA, has compromised national security," says Bonifaz. "This scandal effectively prevents the prosecution of people, some of whom may actually be culpable as terrorists."
Bonifaz, who on the eve of the Iraq war attempted to prevent the invasion by bringing a lawsuit on behalf of some active duty soldiers contending that the war was illegal, and who is currently running for Secretary of State for Massachusetts, says that a round of cases seeking to quash prosecutions and convictions based upon the illegal spying could develop into "the equivalent for Bush of Nixon's Watergate tapes."
He explains that as the public learns from public court proceedings just what the extent of the NSA domestic spying campaign has been, and how it has damaged legitimate prosecutions, and as higher courts begin to rule on the impact of and illegality of that campaign, there could be growing calls for impeachment on that issue alone.
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Information about both books and other work by Lindorff can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com
Comment: Dave, Dave, Dave! Don't you get it? The natural answer that will be given to this problem is to simply get rid of the 4th Amendment! It will be said that it is the 4th amendment that is endangering America, NOT search and seizure that violates said amendment! It's a perfect set up: violate a law, set it up so that the violation creates a danger, and then it is easy to get rid of the law!!! The people will demand it!
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has opened an investigation into leaks to the media about the National Security Agency's classified domestic surveillance program.
The program authorizes the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans without first seeking permission from a court for a search warrant. It has caused a political uproar with both Democrats and Republicans questioning whether President Bush went beyond his powers under the U.S. Constitution in authorizing it.
The New York Times was the first to report the story on December 16th and then officials confirmed its existence to CNN and other organizations.
"The Justice Department has opened an investigation of the unauthorized disclosure of classified information related to the NSA," a Justice Department official told CNN.
The leak investigation is expected to be handled, as is standard, by Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents. Officials would not say when the investigation began.
The New York Times declined to comment on the leak investigation.
The secret eavesdropping program, which President Bush authorized shortly after the September 11 attacks, allows the NSA to intercept domestic communications without a warrant, as long as one party is outside the United States.
Bush, who acknowledged the program's existence in a televised address December 17, says it is essential to help counterterrorism agents quickly trace the communications of terror suspects. He called the disclosure of the program's existence a "shameful act."
"We know that a two-minute phone conversation between somebody linked to al Qaeda here and an operative overseas could lead directly to the loss of thousands of lives," Bush said during a December 19 news conference. "To save American lives, we must be able to act fast and to detect these conversations so we can prevent new attacks."
"It has been effective in disrupting the enemy while safeguarding our civil liberties," the president added.
Bush, who first authorized the program in early 2002, said he has renewed the program over 30 times since its inception and reviews it every 45 days.
Legality questioned
But Democrats and some Republicans have questioned the legality of the program, and some lawmakers have called for an independent investigation or congressional hearings.
The chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, said he intends to hold hearings early in 2006 into whether the surveillance program is legal. A spokeswoman for Sen. Specter said she expected the NSA surveillance hearings to begin as soon as Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito are completed.
Many lawmakers question why the the president did not get authorization for the wiretaps from a secret court established by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
"FISA says it's the exclusive law to authorize wiretaps," Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin told CNN. "This administration is playing fast and loose with the law in national security. The issue here is whether the president of the United States is putting himself above the law, and I believe he has done so."
Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, said the president could have gone back to a FISA court to get approval even after the wiretaps started if he was concerned about speed. "I'm just stunned by the president's rationales with respect to the illegal wiretapping," Reed said. "There are two points that have to be emphasized with respect to the FISA procedure: They're secret and they're retroactive.
"There is no situation where time is of such an essence they can't use the FISA proceedings. And so the president's justification, I think, is without merit."
But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the president's authorization of the program was within his legal authority.
"There were many people, many lawyers within the administration who advised the president that he had an inherent authority as commander-in-chief under the Constitution to engage in these kind of signals, intelligence of our enemy," Gonzales said.
However, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who negotiated the congressional resolution with the White House, disputes the claim that the authorization to use force permitted Bush to launch the secret wiretaps without court authorization.
The defense attorneys for several terror suspects prosecuted by the Justice Department said Wednesday they might file court motions questioning the legality of the NSA surveillance project.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday supported government eavesdropping to prevent terrorism but said a major controversy over presidential powers could have been avoided by obtaining court warrants.
Powell said that when he was in the Cabinet, he was not told that President Bush authorized a warrantless National Security Agency surveillance operation after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week" Powell said he sees "absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions" to protect the nation.
But he added, "My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants. And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it."
The New York Times reported on its Internet site Friday that the NSA has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States. The program bypassed the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Powell said Congress will need to judge whether Bush is correct in his assertion that he could approve eavesdropping without first obtaining court orders.
"And that's going to be a great debate," Powell said.
Powell, who also is a former chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, had no reservations when asked whether eavesdropping should continue.
"Of course it should continue," he said. "And nobody is suggesting that the president shouldn't do this."
Comment: More "normalizing" of Bush's illegal activities.
A University of California chancellor called Wednesday on Bay Area congressional representatives to investigate the government's reported spying at college campus protests, including one in April at UC-Santa Cruz.
``We are greatly concerned about the Pentagon's investigation of a UCSC campus protest of military recruiting last spring,'' UCSC Chancellor Denice Denton wrote in a campus e-mail. ``MSNBC reports that this protest was classified as a `credible threat' by the Department of Defense.''
She called the government's investigation of the campus protest ``a questionable use of military resources,'' adding, ``It is especially disquieting that political dissent would be considered threatening.''
``As a nation, we must be vigilant and careful in balancing the competing needs of national security and the fundamental rights and values of individuals in a free and democratic society,'' Denton wrote.
Calls and e-mails on Denton's behalf went out Wednesday to the offices of U.S. Reps. Sam Farr, D-Salinas; Mike Honda, D-Campbell; Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto; Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose; and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
``We registered our concern with them, however, almost everyone is away'' for the holiday, said university spokeswoman Elizabeth Irwin. ``We expressed interest in supporting them to ensure oversight for protection of constitutional rights.''
Farr already has denounced the Pentagon spying, which came to light earlier this month after NBC News obtained a secret 400-page Defense Department document listing more than 1,500 ``suspicious incidents'' across the country over 10 months.
An eight-page excerpt released by NBC noted monitoring of protests at UC-Berkeley (deemed not a credible threat), planning for a march and rally in Hollywood (not credible) and protests at a San Diego naval facility (credible.)
A Defense Department official was quoted as telling NBC News that all domestic intelligence is ``properly collected.''
Crawford, Texas — President Bush, unhappy with Congress for not permanently extending the Patriot Act, on Friday signed a bill that renews the anti-terrorism law for a few weeks and pushes lawmakers to take up the debate over its measures.
The president signed about a dozen other bills, including one funding government agencies and a defence measure that funnels extra money to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf Coast.
Bush is spending the week between Christmas and New Year's Day at his Texas ranch. He plans to return to Washington on Sunday after visiting wounded troops at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.
Bush is urging lawmakers to extend permanently parts of the Patriot Act set to expire.
“Suffice it to say, our law enforcement community needs this,” White House spokesman Trent Duffy said. “He's not satisfied with a one-month extension. But we've got to get that in place and we've got to work with them to get it permanently re-extended.”
The Patriot Act extension keeps anti-terrorism laws that were due to expire Dec. 31 in place until Feb. 3. The one-month extension means lawmakers must debate again in January the merits of government anti-terrorism powers that some critics fault for not protecting Americans' civil liberties.
The extension allows the FBI to continue to investigate terrorism cases using powers granted in 2001, including roving wiretaps and the authority to intercept wire, spoken and electronic communications relating to terrorism.
Bush and GOP leaders pushed hard for a permanent extension of the expiring provisions but could not overcome a Senate filibuster.
The appropriations bill provides funds for the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. A provision would help ice dancer Tanith Belbin gain American citizenship in time to represent the United States in the Turin Olympics.
If eligible, Belbin and partner Ben Agosto are considered America's best hope for figure skating gold in Turin. A medal of any colour would be the country's first in ice dancing since 1976.
The defence bill Bush signed keeps the Pentagon running, provides $50-billion (U.S.) more to military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and gives $29-billion in hurricane aid to the Gulf Coast. The Gulf Coast aid includes $11.5-billion for community grants to spur economic development, along with money for schools and to start shoring up New Orleans' levees.
The bill provides $3.8-billion to prepare for a possible outbreak of bird flu and liability protections for flu drug manufacturers.
From correspondents in Crawford
AFP
December 31, 2005
PRESIDENT George W Bush signed today a law explicitly prohibiting torture of prisoners in US hands outside of the US, after months of fighting the legislation, the White House said.
The anti-torture statute was an amendment to a broader defence appropriations bill signed by Mr Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he was taking a year-end holiday.
The law comes as the Bush administration faces accusations of torturing alleged terrorists detained in the US war on terror.
Mr Bush said the amendment passed by Congress sets "the legal framework for US detention and interrogation activities."
"US law and policy already prohibit torture. Our policy has also been not to use cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, at home or abroad. This legislation now makes that a matter of statute for practices abroad," he said.
The law requires that the treatment of prisoners is codified in the US Army Field Manual, Mr Bush said.
The administration is committed to treating all detainees held by the US in a manner consistent with our Constitution, laws, and treaty obligations, which reflect the values we hold dear," he said.
At the same time, he noted, "The detention and interrogation of captured terrorists are critical tools in the war on terror. It is vital that our government gather intelligence to protect the American people from terrorist attacks, including critical information that may be obtained from those terrorists we have captured."
Bush also noted that the law does not empower "terrorists" to sue any American, including US military personnel.
US soldiers need "respect," he said, and not "a rash of lawsuits brought by our enemies in our own courts.
Despite the White House's resistance, the new law passed with strong support in Congress. The law was originally proposed by Senator John McCain, a Vietnam war veteran who was tortured while being held as a prisoner of war by North Vietnam.
Earlier Bush also grudgingly signed a one-month extension of the Patriot Act, which is designed to help US law enforcement block possible terror attacks.
Bush had pushed Congress to make the law permanent, but many lawmakers want to amend it first to increase privacy protections.
Accusing President Bush of breaking the law and lying to the American people, the American Civil Liberties Union today condemned a Justice Department investigation into the leak of the National Security Agency's operation to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists.
The Justice Department announced the investigation today of disclosures to The New York Times about surveillance conducted without warrants on calls between U.S. citizens and terrorists in foreign countries since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Administration officials argue the president had the power to conduct the wiretaps under the Constitution's war powers provision and contend Congress also gave permission when it authorized the use of military force against terrorism in a resolution adopted days after 9-11.
The ACLU, however, called on the administration to drop the newly announced probe of the leakers and, instead, to order an investigation of Bush's program.
"President Bush broke the law and lied to the American people when he unilaterally authorized secret wiretaps of U.S. citizens," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.
The ACLU wrote a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and took out two full-page advertisements in the New York Times calling for appointment of a special counsel to determine whether Bush violated federal wiretapping laws.
Romero said that "rather than focus on this constitutional crisis, Attorney General Gonzales is cracking down on critics of his friend and boss."
"Our nation is strengthened, not weakened, by those whistleblowers who are courageous enough to speak out on violations of the law," Romero said.
The controversy began two weeks ago with a Times story, one day after the Iraqi elections, revealing the existence of the program. The paper said it withheld the story for a year because it needed more time for reporting, but its publishing came on the eve of the release of a book by reporter James Risen on the same subject.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the Justice Department made the decision to investigate the leak on its own.
"The leaking of classified information is a serious issue," he said, according to the Associated Press. "The fact is that al-Qaida's playbook is not printed on Page One and when America's is, it has serious ramifications."
The administration made a legal interpretation of the president's powers that enabled it to avoid requirements under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
As WorldNetDaily reported, a new survey found nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the NSA should monitor communications between terrorist suspects overseas and contacts inside the U.S.
By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 31, 2005
CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 30 -- On most of the 365 days he has enjoyed at his secluded ranch here, President Bush's idea of paradise is to hop in his white Ford pickup truck in jeans and work boots, drive to a stand of cedars, and whack the trees to the ground.
If the soil is moist enough, he will light a match and burn the wood. If it is parched, as it is across Texas now, the wood will sit in piles scattered over the 1,600-acre spread until it is safe for a ranch hand to torch -- or until the president can come home and do the honors himself.
Sometimes this activity is the only official news to come out of what aides call the Western White House. For five straight days since Monday, when Bush retreated to the ranch for his Christmas sojourn, a spokesman has announced that the president, in between intelligence briefings, calls to advisers and bicycling, has spent much of his day clearing brush.
This might strike many Washingtonians as a curious pastime. It does burn a lot of calories. But brush clearing is dusty, it is exhausting (the president goes at it in 100 degree-plus heat), and it is earsplitting, requiring earplugs to dull the chain saw's buzz.
For Bush, who is known to spend early-morning hours hacking at unwanted mesquite, cocklebur weeds, hanging limbs and underbrush only to go back for more after lunch, it borders on obsession.
Aides are corralled to help, although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a frequent guest, has escaped brush duty. "The tradecraft she uses to get out of it is highly confidential, and I can't discuss it," said national security adviser Steven J. Hadley. To date, no visiting foreign leaders have been conscripted.
The president "clears brush like he rides his bike," said deputy press secretary Trent Duffy, who has sawed beside Bush. "He goes at it."
Ronald Reagan chopped wood and rode horses, Bush's father sailed off the shore of Kennebunkport, Maine, and Bill Clinton jogged. For George W. Bush, clearing brush projects the image of a cowboy president, a tough rancher fighting the elements to survive. That is, of course, the White House's projection; the president's critics take a dimmer view.
"Most likely he's doing that to show the media he's got a chain saw," joked Larry Mattladge, who raises Black Angus cows three-quarters of a mile from the Bush ranch and built his fence rows out of cedar posts. "It's a man's thing. Brush clearing is not only for the young at heart, it's for the young. It's to show he's a Texan."
Presidential historian Robert Dallek said: "This is part of his macho image. Obviously this is nothing Bush has to do. He's the son of a rich man who doesn't have to spend his time cutting underbrush."
But some of Bush's neighbors in the Crawford area said they understand his pleasure -- even if he doesn't have to do it. "We do it because we have to," said Zach Arias, who with his wife raises cows on 400 acres about 20 miles from town. "But afterwards, you kind of go, 'Wow. I feel good about what I did today.' " White House counselor Dan Bartlett explained it this way: "It's therapeutic for him, I guess. There's very few things he gets to do hands on."
Clearing brush is a lot like weeding the yard, although on a real ranch it is an economic necessity. In central Texas, cedar and mesquite trees are invaders competing for moisture with grass, gobbling water from the soil and hoarding rain and sunlight on their branches. With his livestock's food supply at stake, a farmer could live or die on how well his brush is cleared. Local agronomists say brush control has been a part of rural Texas since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s, when the botanical bandits spread across the arid soil.
"It's pretty important," said Charles E. Gilliland, a research economist with the Texas A&M University's Real Estate Center. "If you don't watch out, it just kind of takes over."
Certainly the 1,583 acres of rugged canyons and rocky hillsides, creeks and pasture land on Prairie Chapel Ranch contain a lot of brush. Bush, a creature of habit, is not in danger of finishing the job. The Bush ranch, however, is not a working ranch. The president has kept only a handful of cattle on the property since Kenneth Engelbrecht, who sold him the former hog farm six years ago, stopped leasing back some pasture land that supported a herd of cows.
"What the president is doing is highly recreational," said Gene Hall, spokesman for the Waco-based Texas Farm Bureau, a lobbying group of farmers and ranchers. "Some people just enjoy that kind of outdoor activity. Once you've been cooped up in the Oval Office a couple of weeks, it might be kind of nice."
Clearing brush has taken on new meaning since a rural land rush brought hordes of wealthy city dwellers to these parts to snap up a piece of ranchland for some Texas solitude. Old-time ranchers are fading out in favor of smaller hobby "ranchettes," whose owners make money from deer hunting or wildlife retreats.
The Bushes, whose spread exceeds a ranchette in size, are in good company with celebrities Tommy Lee Jones, Matthew McConaughey, Patrick Swayze and baseball Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan. With most of their publicists vacationing this week, it could not be confirmed whether these Texas ranchers enjoy clearing brush.
Real ranchers, who need to clear a whole lot of brush for pasture land, either hire someone to spray herbicides from the air or run an excavator through it. They tend to tend cattle, several said.
Bush, by contrast, practices a selective, do-it-yourself sculpting to enhance his enjoyment of his property, local experts say. He will clear underbrush to preserve beautiful live oaks and pecan trees, or to prepare the 50 acres where Laura Bush is cultivating native grasses, or to help carve nature trails through the ranch's many canyons.
"It's a selective control of the brush," said Sam Middleton, owner of a West Texas ranch brokerage, who added that this enhances a ranch's value.
Then again, there will be times when the president drives around his property and "will see a stand of cedar trees and say 'Let's clear those,' " said Joseph Hagin, Bush's deputy chief of staff, who has been cutting brush with his boss all week. They do not talk a lot of policy over the sound of their chain saws, he said.
Professional brush removal can cost up to $200 an hour. The irony is that many working ranchers cannot afford it in these days of declining profits. Surely, the president could afford to hire professionals. The White House declined to make the ranch manager available to a reporter to explain who, if anyone, clears brush when Bush returns to Washington.
As much as it is a metaphor for presidential vigor, Bush's preoccupation with wielding his chain saw has become fodder for bloggers and other critics who complain that he is isolated and disengaged.
"He shouldn't have time to be clearing brush," said Kay Lucas, a grandmother and antiwar activist who drives 25 miles a day to care for the Crawford Peace House, a gathering spot for Cindy Sheehan and her protest against the war.
After White House press secretary Scott McClellan noted during a vacation in August that although Bush "always enjoys his time in Crawford, he's president 24/7," the Washington blogger Wonkette weighed in with this jab: "Ah, yes, especially when consulting with that little-known Cabinet official, 'Secretary of Clearing Brush.' "
Comment: Well, boys and their toys... We think it's a GOOD thing that Bush loves his chainsaw so much! After all, if he "goes at it" the same way he "goes at" his bike-riding, maybe one day he will have a mishap... Gives an all-new meaning to the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," eh?
By Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei
The Washington Post
Dec. 28, 2005
President Bush shifted his rhetoric on Iraq in recent weeks after an intense debate among advisers about how to pull out of his political freefall, with senior adviser Karl Rove urging a campaign-style attack on critics while younger aides pushed for more candor about setbacks in the war, according to Republican strategists.
The result was a hybrid of the two approaches as Bush lashed out at war opponents in Congress, then turned to a humbler assessment of events on the ground in Iraq that included admissions about how some of his expectations had been frustrated. The formula helped Bush regain his political footing as record-low poll numbers began to rebound. Now his team is rethinking its approach to his second term in hopes of salvaging it.
The Iraq push culminated the rockiest political year of this presidency, which included the demise of signature domestic priorities, the indictment of the vice president's top aide, the collapse of a Supreme Court nomination, a fumbled response to a natural disaster and a rising death toll in an increasingly unpopular war. It was not until Bush opened a fresh campaign to reassure the public on Iraq that he regained some traction.
The lessons drawn by a variety of Bush advisers inside and outside the White House as they map a road to recovery in 2006 include these: Overarching initiatives such as revamping Social Security are unworkable in a time of war. The public wants a balanced appraisal of what is happening on the battlefield as well as pledges of victory. And Iraq trumps all.
"I don't think they realized that Iraq is the totality of their legacy until fairly recently," said former congressman Vin Weber (R-Minn.), an outside adviser to the White House. "There is not much of a market for other issues."
It took many months, and much political pain, for that realization to sink in. In the heady days after reelection, Bush and Rove sketched out an ambitious agenda to avoid the traditional pitfalls of second-term presidents. They settled on four domestic priorities for 2005: remaking Social Security, revising the tax code, cracking down on court-clogging litigation and easing immigration rules. As the year ends, only some litigation limits have passed, and Social Security, tax and immigration plans are dead or comatose.
As Bush focused on Social Security the first half of the year, the cascading suicide bombings in Iraq played out on American television screens. It was summer by the time Bush decided to shift public attention to Iraq. A speech at Fort Bragg, N.C., failed to move the political needle. Bush then escaped to Texas for August -- a vacation shadowed for weeks by a dead soldier's mother named Cindy Sheehan, then brought to an abrupt halt by Hurricane Katrina.
Plans to rebuild public confidence on Iraq were shelved as the president was consumed by the hurricane and the fiasco over Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination. Then after I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, was charged with perjury in the CIA leak case, Democrats forced an extraordinary closed-door Senate session to demand further investigation of the roots of the Iraq war.
Galvanizing moment
That proved a galvanizing moment at the White House, according to a wide range of GOP strategists in and out of the administration. Rove, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman and White House strategic planning director Peter H. Wehner urged the president to dust off the 2004 election strategy and fight back, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. White House counselor Dan Bartlett and communications director Nicolle Wallace, however, counseled a more textured approach. The same-old Bush was not enough, they said; he needed to be more detailed about his strategy in Iraq and, most of all, more open in admitting mistakes -- something that does not come easily to Bush.
Although Rove raised concerns about giving critics too much ground, the younger-generation aides prevailed. Bush agreed to try the approach so long as he did not come off sounding too negative. Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University specialist on wartime public opinion who now works at the White House, helped draft a 35-page public plan for victory in Iraq, a paper principally designed to prove that Bush had one.
Bush went into campaign mode, accusing Democrats of hypocrisy for voting to authorize the war and then turning against it. When Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) proposed pulling troops out of Iraq, the White House issued an unusually harsh and personal response comparing him to liberal filmmaker Michael Moore. The original draft, officials said, had been even tougher.
Within a few weeks, though, the president shifted tone. Writing off 30 percent or more of the public as adamantly against the war, his advisers focused on winning back a similar size group that had soured on Iraq but, they believed, wanted to be convinced victory was possible.
The White House employed every bully pulpit the president has -- speeches to military, diplomatic and political audiences; interviews with key television anchors; Cheney's surprise trip to Iraq; private briefings for congressional centrists; a prime-time Oval Office address on Dec. 18 that reached 37 million people; and an East Room news conference.
The humility theme was woven into speeches, often in the first two minutes to keep viewers from turning away. Aides had noticed that anger at Bush after Hurricane Katrina subsided somewhat after he took responsibility for the response. The idea, one senior official said, was like fighting with a spouse: "You need to give voice to their concern. That doesn't necessarily solve the division and the difference, but it drains the disagreement of some of its animosity if you feel you've been heard."
Better yet, from the White House perspective, Democrats helped frame the choice when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) endorsed Murtha's withdrawal plan and party Chairman Howard Dean declared it impossible to win in Iraq. "For most of the year we were debating events," the senior official said. "Now we're debating Democrats."
By Arthur Spiegelman
Reuters
Fri Dec 30, 9:05 AM ET
LOS ANGELES - Call it the wrong phrase at the wrong time but "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" was named on Thursday as U.S. President George W. Bush's most memorable phrase of 2005.
The ill-timed praise of a now disgraced agency head became a national punch line for countless jokes and pointed comments about the administration's handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and added to the president's reputation for verbal gaffes and clumsy turns of phrase.
Paul JJ Payack, president of Global Language Monitor, a nonprofit group that monitors language use, says Bush's statement in support of the then-director of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency may be remembered for years to come.
"The 'Brownie' quote leads our 2005 list of Bushisms -- memorable phrases or new words coined by the president," Payack said, adding that Bush may be the foremost White House creator of new words, citing such past efforts as "misunderestimate" (to seriously underestimate) and "embetter" (to make emotionally better).
Ten days after Bush verbally patted Michael Brown on the back before the TV cameras, Brown resigned amid a public uproar over his qualifications and the administration's failure to get aid to New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
Although the president did not originate any new words this year, he had several notable statements, Payack said, citing the following:
-- "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," Bush said in explaining his communications strategy last May.
-- "I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?" Bush asked in a note to Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice during a U.N. Security Council meeting in September.
-- "This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table," Bush said in Brussels last February.
-- "In terms of timetables, as quickly as possible - whatever that means," the president said of his timeframe for passing Social Security legislation in March.
-- "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law," Bush said in describing illegal immigrants in Tucson, Arizona, last month.
Global Language Monitor uses an algorithm to track words and phrases in print, electronic media and the Internet. The words and phrases are tracked in relation to their frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets.
By EVO MORALES
This is the text of a speech given on December 24 at the "In Defense of Humanity" conference.
What happened these past days in Bolivia was a great revolt by those who have been oppressed for more than 500 years. The will of the people was imposed this September and October, and has begun to overcome the empire's cannons. We have lived for so many years through the confrontation of two cultures: the culture of life represented by the indigenous people, and the culture of death represented by West. When we the indigenous people--together with the workers and even the businessmen of our country--fight for life and justice, the State responds with its "democratic rule of law."
What does the "rule of law" mean for indigenous people? For the poor, the marginalized, the excluded, the "rule of law" means the targeted assassinations and collective massacres that we have endured. Not just this September and October, but for many years, in which they have tried to impose policies of hunger and poverty on the Bolivian people. Above all, the "rule of law" means the accusations that we, the Quechuas, Aymaras and Guaranties of Bolivia keep hearing from our governments: that we are narcos, that we are anarchists. This uprising of the Bolivian people has been not only about gas and hydrocarbons, but an intersection of many issues: discrimination, marginalization , and most importantly, the failure of neoliberalism.
The cause of all these acts of bloodshed, and for the uprising of the Bolivian people, has a name: neoliberalism. With courage and defiance, we brought down Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada--the symbol of neoliberalism in our country--on October 17, the Bolivians' day of dignity and identity. We began to bring down the symbol of corruption and the political mafia.
And I want to tell you, companeras and companeros, how we have built the consciousness of the Bolivian people from the bottom up. How quickly the Bolivian people have reacted, have said--as Subcomandate Marcos says--ya basta!, enough policies of hunger and misery.
For us, October 17th is the beginning of a new phase of construction. Most importantly, we face the task of ending selfishness and individualism, and creating--from the rural campesino and indigenous communities to the urban slums--other forms of living, based on solidarity and mutual aid. We must think about how to redistribute the wealth that is concentrated among few hands. This is the great task we Bolivian people face after this great uprising.
It has been very important to organize and mobilize ourselves in a way based on transparency, honesty, and control over our own organizations. And it has been important not only to organize but also to unite. Here we are now, united intellectuals in defense of humanity--I think we must have not only unity among the social movements, but also that we must coordinate with the intellectual movements. Every gathering, every event of this nature for we labor leaders who come from the social struggle, is a great lesson that allows us to exchange experiences and to keep strengthening our people and our grassroots organizations.
Thus, in Bolivia, our social movements, our intellectuals, our workers--even those political parties which support the popular struggle joined together to drive out Gonzalo Sánchez Lozada. Sadly, we paid the price with many of our lives, because the empire's arrogance and tyranny continue humiliating the Bolivian people.
It must be said, compañeras and compañeros, that we must serve the social and popular movements rather than the transnational corporations. I am new to politics; I had hated it and had been afraid of becoming a career politician. But I realized that politics had once been the science of serving the people, and that getting involved in politics is important if you want to help your people. By getting involved, I mean living for politics, rather than living off of politics. We have coordinated our struggles between the social movements and political parties, with the support of our academic institutions, in a way that has created a greater national consciousness. That is what made it possible for the people to rise up in these recent days.
When we speak of the "defense of humanity," as we do at this event, I think that this only happens by eliminating neoliberalism and imperialism. But I think that in this we are not so alone, because we see, every day that anti-imperialist thinking is spreading, especially after Bush's bloody "intervention" policy in Iraq. Our way of organizing and uniting against the system, against the empire's aggression towards our people, is spreading, as are the strategies for creating and strengthening the power of the people.
I believe only in the power of the people. That was my experience in my own region, a single province--the importance of local power. And now, with all that has happened in Bolivia, I have seen the importance of the power of a whole people, of a whole nation. For those of us who believe it important to defend humanity, the best contribution we can make is to help create that popular power. This happens when we check our personal interests with those of the group. Sometimes, we commit to the social movements in order to win power. We need to be led by the people, not use or manipulate them.
We may have differences among our popular leaders--and it's true that we have them in Bolivia. But when the people are conscious, when the people know what needs to be done, any difference among the different local leaders ends. We've been making progress in this for a long time, so that our people are finally able to rise up, together.
What I want to tell you, compañeras and compañeros--what I dream of and what we as leaders from Bolivia dream of is that our task at this moment should be to strengthen anti-imperialist thinking. Some leaders are now talking about how we--the intellectuals, the social and political movements--can organize a great summit of people like Fidel, Chávez. and Lula to say to everyone: "We are here, taking a stand against the aggression of the US imperialism."
A summit at which we are joined by compañera Rigoberta Menchú, by other social and labor leaders, great personalities like Pérez Ezquivel. A great summit to say to our people that we are together, united, and defending humanity. We have no other choice, compañeros and compañeras--if we want to defend humanity we must change systems and this means overthrowing US imperialism.
Evo Morales is the newly elected president of Bolivia.
A half-century after Jan Karski warned the world about the consequences of hatred, his words still ring true.
He blends in well these days, living most of his quiet life in an apartment building on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., his accent piquing no curiosity among neighbors of all the nationalities one encounters in the capital. In the midst of these mostly retired educators, civil servants, diplomats, soldiers and business people, he cuts a dignified but unexceptional figure.
Many of them know about him now, but most have never seen the compact study in his modest widower's apartment, its walls and table space full of talismans of honor: honorary degrees from universities; awards from organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, United States Holocaust Memorial Council and the Archdiocese of Washington; the Polish military equivalent of the U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor; and a certificate commemorating the highest honor the State of Israel can bestow, honorary citizenship.
Jan Karski, now 81 years old, a Polish-born Roman Catholic, an American citizen since 1954, retired after many years as a professor of political science at Georgetown University, has received all these and other accolades for an effort he made a half-century ago as a young, clandestine operative from Nazi-occupied Poland-- an effort that failed.
He tried to stop the Holocaust.
To me, Jan Karski is a hero in the classic, mythic sense. That shocks me. I would have thought no character of that kind could exist in our century. There's a checklist of traits that archetypal heroes have in common: bravery, a focus on some overarching duty, piety in some form, etc. I haven't tried to make him fill that bill. He just does. If he shares some attributes with Vergil's Aeneas or Homer's Odysseus, maybe it's because those epic heroes reflect values that do manifest themselves, however rarely, in real human beings.
I have read criticism of other books-- largely spurred by the mass success of Schindler's List, I think-- to the effect that a focus on "heroes of the Holocaust" is distracting from or demeaning to the enormity of the event itself. I strenuously disagree. The fact that the Holocaust happened degrades all of humanity by demonstrating the depths to which a society can sink. Not to bring to light those countervailing elements of human goodness which emerged at the time is, I think, to distort the image we have of ourselves and our own capabilities as individuals. If our children learn of the Holocaust solely as an indictment of humanity, they may never understand what positive inner resources they have to do the right thing when they are confronted with evil.
The tale of Karski's wartime activities is much more than the story of one man's adventures. It is a parable of human folly, urgently relevant to the world we inhabit today.
Jan Karski witnessed, and tried desperately to avert or mitigate, both the tragedy of Poland's betrayal by its western allies and the monstrosity of the Holocaust. He came face to face with the adherents of Realpolitik in the British and American governments who argued for caution, argued for prudence, argued for routine in both the democratic world's alliance with Stalin and its struggle against Hitler. Karski argued for action.
His mission was a failure.
True, the risks Karski took to witness the Final Solution firsthand and the mind-shattering reports he delivered about it forced Allied leaders to confront the horror for the first time. True, at the very outset of the Cold War, he tried to dispel American illusions of a benign Soviet ally. True, when Karski broke the taboos of his exiled government and began to speak out about the fate of the Jews, he played a major role in shaping public opinion in the free world. True, the head of the U.S. War Refugee Board credited Karski with motivating Roosevelt to establish his organization, which saved some tens of thousands of Jewish lives in the last years of the war.
Nonetheless, his mission was a failure.
The sacrifices of Jan Karski, of the Poles who died to save him from the Gestapo and of the Jews who died despite his efforts can only be redeemed if we now come to understand Karski's failure-- and learn not to let it happen again.
Hitler's campaign against the Jews was unique in history, but it did not quench for all time the thirst for genocide among tyrants. Given the opportunity by irresolute leaders and uncaring peoples in free nations, other Hitlers and Stalins can continue the work of those men. In any number of the world's tortured nations, at any given moment, lone voices like Karski's are crying out against institutionalized brutality.
We hope our book will help to ensure that such voices are never again ignored.
I would like to share Professor Karski's own assessment of his activities, as given at a conference in 1981 where he spoke out publicly about his work for the first time since the war:
The Lord assigned me a role to speak and write during the war, when-- as it seemed to me-- it might help. It did not.
Furthermore, when the war came to its end, I learned that the governments, the leaders, the scholars, the writers did not know what had been happening to the Jews. They were taken by surprise. The murder of six million innocents was a secret....
Then I became a Jew. Like the family of my wife-- all of them perished in the ghettos, in the concentration camps, in the gas chambers-- so all murdered Jews became my family.
But I am a Christian Jew. I am a practicing Catholic. Although I am not a heretic, still my faith tells me the second Original Sin has been committed by humanity: through commission, or omission, or self-imposed ignorance, or insensitivity, or self-interest, or hypocrisy, or heartless rationalization.
This sin will haunt humanity to the end of time. It does haunt me. And I want it to be so.
Comment: Laura writes about Jan Karski in her autobiography, Amazing Grace (50 copies left, when they are gone, no more will be printed). Later, she undertook to research and write about the Polish Holocaust. This two part article has been praised by the grandson of Stanislaw Mikolajczyk as a concise and accurate rendering of what happened in Poland during WW II.
It is my purpose to open the case, particularly under Count One of the Indictment, and to deal with the Common Plan or Conspiracy to achieve ends possible only by resort to Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity. (Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. Volume II. Proceedings: 11/14/1945 -11/30/1945.)
In western Europe, which was highly visible to the outside world, Germany was careful to observe Geneva Convention guidelines. Consequently, their actions were not a matter of international concern.
In the east, particularly in Poland, atrocities had been committed, blatantly, from 1939 onward. The escape of Slovakian Jews, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Weczler, from Auschwitz in April of 1944 brought the brutal treatment of camp inmates to the attention of western authorities.
Even earlier, following the invasion of Poland, members of the exiled Polish government, in particular Edvard Benes, had reported on the Nazi treatment of civilians in eastern Europe where slave labor was commonplace from 1939 on and where extermination was the order of the day after 1942.
In response to these reports, the United Nations forms the United Nations' War Crimes Commission in October, 1943 and a list of war criminals was already in process over a year before the war ended. The Commission met in London on October 26, 1943 and drafted the London Agreement to prosecute war criminals.
At the conclusion of the war, the Allied nations formed an International Military Tribunal charged with the task of prosecuting Nazi war criminals. The United States Prosecutor, Robert Jackson, articulated the three areas of prosecution to be pursued:
It is my purpose to open the case, particularly under Count One of the Indictment, and to deal with the Common Plan or Conspiracy to achieve ends possible only by resort to Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity. (Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. Volume II. Proceedings: 11/14/1945 -11/30/1945.)
The tribunal, realizing that its task was unprecedented in human history, went to considerable lengths to provide a rationale for a process based on international law. This task was fairly easy with regard to the treatment of prisoners of war. The Hague Convention had spelled out the guidelines in this area very clearly. For the other two areas, however, the Tribunal was on shaky ground and pretty much made up the rules and rationale as the trials unfolded.
Three factors account for this circumstance. First, the absence of any precedent and clear statement of international law, second, the recency of the events under examination, and third, the uniqueness of the events under examination.
"Crimes against the peace" referred to the act of waging an aggressive war. Of course, war by its very nature is aggressive. However, in the aftermath of World War I, world powers made an attempt, through the United Nations, to create the mechanisms by which world war could be avoided in the future. Germany was certainly in violation of these stated principles forbidding military aggression.
"Crimes against Humanity" was the category for the brutal murder of millions of innocent civilians. No specific international agreements existed, simply because the signatories to the Geneva and Hague agreements had never imagined that the kinds of atrocities the Tribunal would have to consider could ever be an issue among civilized nations.
There were four main prosecutors representing the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The first issue of the Tribunal was to deal with the charge of "Crimes Against Humanity," specifically the Nazi conspiracy to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The trial opened on November 20, 1945. Justice Robert Jackson, the United States' chief prosecutor, gave the opening address .
The Role of Murray C. Bernays
In July, 1944, with evidence of Nazi atrocities, not only against European Jews but also against Allied prisoners of war, the U.S. Office of the Chief of Staff appointed Lt. Colonel Murray C. Bernays to head up the investigation on Nazi war crimes against U.S. servicemen. Bernays, a naturalized American Jew of Lithuanian origin, and a graduate of Harvard Law School, was practicing law in New York at the time of his appointment. A brilliant lawyer and meticulous investigator, he began the task of collecting information.
Very early in the process, it became evident to Bernays that it would not be enough to try specific individuals for specific offenses. In his view, it would be a travesty of justice to try individual Nazis and leave the Nazi movement out of which they emerged unpunished. Accordingly, Bernays began looking for a philosophical and theoretical rationale for unmasking the bestiality of the Nazi plan and program as well as its implementation through the instrumentality of accused war criminals. According to Robert E. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, 1983:12, Bernays found the inspiration he needed in Raphael Lemkin's book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Lemkin had argued that organizations like the SS were criminal conspiracies. In that context, the murder of 6 million Jews and nearly 6 million additional civilians by the Nazi government could be viewed as a monstrous conspiracy against humanity -- a conspiracy based upon the doctrine of racial purity.
The second prong of Bernays' approach was the concept of international law which, in his view, represents the conscience of humanity. If, in fact, the Nazi program was a gigantic conspiracy against humanity, carried out in violation of international law, any legal proceedings against Nazi war criminals should be, first and foremost, a trial of the entire Nazi conspiracy. If the Nazi organization is found guilty of atrocities against humanity, that conviction should also extend to any of its members.
Bernays' ideas were presented to President Roosevelt in late November, 1944, in a memorandum from Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, and Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, entitled "The Trial and Punishment of European War Criminals." Major opposition came from Great Britain. The British that war criminals should be executed without trial created something of a stalemate in Washington. One person in the United States who took strong exception to the British reaction was Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, a Roosevelt appointee and close personal friend of the President.
On April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died and Vice-President Harry Truman moved in to fill the office. Exactly two weeks later, Truman authorized Justice Jackson to proceed with preparations for the trial pending approval from the United Nations.
Jackson began putting together a staff and developing a prosecution plan. His plan called for the creation of an international military tribunal composed of prosecutors from the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. British opposition remained strong until it became apparent that the end of the war was near. When Hitler and Himmler and Goebbels committed suicide and Mussolini was executed in Italy, their position shifted significantly. On May 31, 1945, the United Nations War Crimes Commission met in London. General approval was given to the Military Tribunal plan. Churchill appointed Attorney General Maxwell Fyfe as the chief British prosecutor. Andre Gros led the French delegation and Major General I.T. Nikitchenko headed up the Soviet staff.
After some very sharp debate, the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany was chosen as the site of the trials. On August 8, 1945, in London, the four participating nations signed the Charter of the International Military Tribunal.
In the course of the trial it was Justice Jackson and the other prosecutors who emerged as the principal actors, along with the defendants. Colonel Telford Taylor is generally credited with designing the procedure for gathering evidence and organizing the preparation for the trial. But it was Colonel Murray C. Bernays who first conceived of the trial and identified the fundamental bases upon which it was to be constructed.
Control Council Law No.10
Marian Mushkat, "Laws Punishing Nazis and Nazi Collaborators," in Gutman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Vol.3:856-857, provides the following:
In occupied Germany, the Allied Control Commission, on December 20, 1945, enacted...Law No. 10, which faithfully reflects the principles then being formulated in preparation for the IMT. It also deals in detail with the punishment of members of organizations that the law defines as criminal. Law No. 10, by its application, reinforced the postulate that the punishment of Nazi war criminals was not to be regarded as an act of revenge, but as a contribution to peace and justice. The trials held in accordance with Law No. 10 clearly show the impact of the proposals that were being drafted for the IMT and that were to guide its procedure and judgments.
All four nations prosecuting the trials adopted the principles outlined in Law No. 10, or drew upon pre-existing principles of military justice in their own countries. The law was clearly rooted in the concept of international law as outlined by the Hague and Geneva Conventions.
Comment: Too bad that Bernays didn't have access to Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology. He would then have understood that it is not any given conspiracy, per se, that makes people guilty, but rather those things that make people susceptible to fall in line with conspiracies: psychopaths and other pathological personalities. Identifying and exposing those elements are crucial in order to prevent the Holocaust of the Future... and that Future may be very close indeed.
SANTIAGO, Chile -- Former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet was stripped of his legal immunity Friday to face charges of diverting public funds to personal bank accounts.
Judge Juan Escobar, president of the Santiago Court of Appeals, said his tribunal voted 21-3 to remove the immunity Pinochet enjoys as a former president.
Friday's decision is part of a wider corruption-related legal process in which Pinochet also lost immunity against charges of tax evasion and secret overseas bank accounts totaling as much as $28 million. A person with legal immunity must be stripped of it separately in each case.
The ruling adds to Pinochet's already difficult legal situation. The 90-year-old was indicted and has been under house arrest since November 24 for his alleged responsibility in the killing and disappearance of nine dissidents in the early years of his 1973-90 dictatorship.
In the new case, Judge Carlos Cerda said Pinochet diverted $2 million from the presidential office to personal accounts abroad.
Pinochet's lawyer, Pablo Rodriguez, was expected to appeal Friday's ruling.
The day before, Rodriguez denied the charges of diverting of funds, saying that Pinochet was owed $340,000 for government expenses he had paid for with his personal money.
Cerda cannot bring Pinochet to trial unless the Supreme Court upholds the lower court's ruling. The top court has already blocked efforts to try Pinochet four times, saying his health does not allow him to stand trial. Pinochet suffers from a mild dementia, has had several strokes, suffers from diabetes and arthritis and has a pacemaker.
Rodriguez said he will again cite health reasons in his appeal.
However, a team of court-appointed doctors who examined Pinochet in October said his health problems were not serious enough to prevent his trial.
While Pinochet has for years battled charges stemming from human rights abuses during his long rule, this year was the first time money and corruption charges were brought against him. In addition to tax evasion charges, he is also accused of using false passports to open bank accounts abroad.
Pinochet's wife, Lucia Hiriart, and their younger son, Marco Antonio, are also indicted as accomplices in the tax evasion.
Egypt’s presidential elections last September were supposed to be the highlight of the Bush administration’s campaign to promote democracy in the Middle East. Instead, they’ve become an embarrassing acknowledgement of its failure.
The electoral process started out on a hopeful note. President Hosni Mubarak had never allowed his quarter-century rule to be challenged at the polls; in previous votes, he had been the only candidate in a yes/no referendum. In 2005, Mubarak decided opposition groups would be permitted to run in parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, opposition newspapers were allowed to publish, allowing some alternative to Egypt’s state-controlled print and electronic media.
No one ever thought Mubarak or his National Democratic Party (NDP) would let the reforms go so far that he’d lose his grip on power. But even the Bush administration has been chagrined at the lengths to which the regime has gone to destroy its opponents while pretending to let democracy take its course. Those measures have been especially extreme in the case of the country’s leading opposition candidate, Ayman Nour, who heads the Ghad (or Tomorrow) Party. A baby-faced lawyer 30 years Mubarak’s junior, Nour, 41, had limited funding but a flair for the dramatic: during one of the periodic bread shortages in Cairo, he got up in parliament and dared the prime minister to eat a slice of the rock-hard stuff the government was distributing to the needy. (The offer was declined.) At other times, Nour belittled Mubarak as an impotent old man afraid of his own people because the president made his campaign visits by helicopter instead of the traditional bus.
Then came the crackdown. In January 2005, authorities trumped up forgery charges against Nour based on the petitions he filed to place his name on the presidential ballot. He was even accused of forging his own name. Officials stripped him of parliamentary immunity in the middle of the night, arrested him on the steps of the Assembly and dragged him down to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the country’s most public place. There policemen kept him kneeling with boots on his neck while they waited an hour for the prison van to arrive, a public humiliation. He was in jail for six weeks.
But then U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delayed an official visit to Egypt in protest and later sent a deputy to visit Nour. Former U.S. secretary of State Madeline Albright came to Cairo and had dinner with him The international furor led to his release and helped buoy his public support. In the September presidential elections, Nour came in second in a crowded field. And though his vote total of 7.6 percent was far behind Mubarak’s 88.6 percent, it was a wake-up call to the regime. “I dared to challenge the pharoah,” he said. “And the pharaohs used to kill all the possible male heirs except their own. Mubarak wants to hand Egypt over to his own son, Gamal, and Gamal could never beat me in a free election.”
Gamal, 41, may well never have to face Nour . Since Nour’s quixotic presidential campaign, the Mubarak machine has gone into overdrive to destroy him—politically, personally and professionally, according to both critics and supporters of the opposition leader. After the vote, Nour was charged with forgery again, as well as a host of bribery, corruption and other charges, including insulting the president. On Dec. 24 Nour was convicted and sentenced to five years’ hard labor.
In the runup to the trial, the government took on Nour’s entire family. Attacks in the state-controlled press against Nour’s father were so vituperative that Nour claims they led to his father’s death. There were published accusations that his father had falsified his son’s birth certificates to hide an illegitimate birth—an incendiary claim in Egypt’s conservative Islamic society. “Then he was watching TV,” an Egyptian channel controlled by the state, “when there was a crawl on the screen saying I was being charged with bribery, and he had a stroke,” says Nour. “It was all too much.”
The media also published scandalous reports about Nour’s wife, Gameela Ismail, who is now a key adviser in his Ghad Party and his chief spokeswoman. (Ismail had worked as a special correspondent for NEWSWEEK but went on leave when she began working for her husband and his party.) Her unlisted number would ring after midnight when Nour was out. “If you don’t shut up, there will be no mother or father,” said the callers. Their two sons were part of an amateur teenage rock band, but it suddenly found performances canceled, with some press critics describing their music as “satanic.”
Police raided Nour’s home and his law office, taking his Rolodex. Soon, his clients began firing him and canceling contracts, saying they’d been contacted by anonymous callers who warned them of retribution if they did not do so. City authorities even cited him for the swimming pool he'd had for years on the rooftop terrace of his apartment in the fashionable Zamalek quarter of Cairo.
In the weeks before his trial, Nour and Ismail received a series of anonymous packages with threatening notes, some containing embarrassing audiotapes and doctored photographs. Nour and his wife become visibly agitated discussing the crude blackmail. “It’s a dirty, disgusting thing,” says Nour. “He [Mubarak] is so ruthless and heartless, the regime has no limits on what it’ll do.”
In an interview last month, Nour was determined not to let the persecution drive him from politics. “The Ghad Party is my last hope.” As for the effect on his family: “I fear what they may do to my sons, but I’m more afraid of my sons living in a country with no freedom.”
In November and December, during a series of parliamentary elections, Nour lost his seat to Yeyha Wahdan, a colonel in the secret police, who resigned from his job just three months before the election. (He couldn’t be reached for comment, but his brother, Sobhi, confirmed his brother’s previous job and said their father had represented that district for 25 years prior to Nour.) “Despite that, we can’t spend as much money as Ayman [Nour] did in this campaign because the source of his money is not known, said Sobhi, who also labeled Nour “a forger, a thief and a fraud” and added, “His whole life is a forgery.”
In the first two rounds of the parliamentary elections, another opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, won 79 out of a total of 454 parliamentary seats, despite what international monitors considered widespread voting fraud by the ruling party. Egyptian authorities became concerned, and police physically barricaded polling places throughout the country and in some places attacked voters. In the violence that ensued, most of it blamed on police, several people died. By the third round of elections, not a single additional Muslim Brotherhood candidate won, although the Islamic party did gain nine more seats in runoff elections in December. Nour’s Ghad Party carried only one seat, half a dozen less than in the previous Parliament.
By now, American officials have turned critical. “Clearly, these actions send the wrong signal about Egypt’s commitment to democracy and freedom,” says a State Department spokesman.
Nour’s lawyers expect Egypt’s relatively independent high court will eventually free him on appeal, but that may take two years. In the meantime, because he suffers from diabetes and has a heart condition, Nour, who is reportedly weakened after a two-week hunger strike to protest the trial, will likely be assigned to cleaning toilets and waiting on other inmates—mostly hardened common criminals.
But the Mubarak regime isn’t stopping there; it’s also trying to take over his Ghad Party, launching another party with the same name and publishing an identically titled party newspaper. The big difference: this ersatz Ghad Party is rabidly pro-Mubarak. It’s leader, Musa Mustafa, is suing to have himself declared the head of the party in Nour’s place, effectively sinking his opposition movement; a ruling is expected Jan. 4, and Egypt’s lower courts are unlikely to rule against the regime.
As things now stand, even if Nour is released from prison and gets his party back, there’s little chance he could be a candidate in the next presidential election in 2011 unless the country’s constitution is changed. None of the opposition parties has the 5 percent of parliamentary seats needed before a party may field a presidential candidate. That would leave the contenders as two: Mubarak, if he chooses to go for a sixth term, or his son, Gamal, now head of the NDP’s policy committee in charge of electoral reforms and widely seen as his father’s heir apparent. “They’re not content for the machine to roll over you and knock you down,” says Ismail, Nour’s wife. “They have to crush you and ground your bones into the dirt. Like the pharaohs did.”
Comment: Gosh! It sounds exactly like Democracy According to George Bush!
Quantum Future Group researchers have been following economic trends for some time now, and several of our experts in this area have noted a troubling "sign of the times" in recent weeks. The following is an exchange between them.
Thomas: I've been following the Midas commentary pretty religiously for the last year or so. It's interesting to see what is developing in the gold market.
I find it very curious that Russia, and now China, announce that they plan to buy large amounts of gold. It's the same play, but in reverse, as when the Western banks announce they are going to sell large amounts of gold.
It seems in both cases the announcements are purely for the sake of manipulating the gold price.
Why would someone about to sell, knowingly make an announcement that will cause the price to go down?
Why would someone wishing to buy, knowingly make an announcement that will cause the price to rise?
I get the feeling that forces are trying to grab the gold while the music is still playing, everyone wants to have as much as possible when the music stops.
This looks like some sort of grand poker match played on a global scale. I bet they are all using game theory to calculate their moves. Who knows what is going on behind the scenes, but now it seems like the players are starting to show their hands. One of these days the bets are going to have to be called in.
I wonder if we could apply game theory here and predict what might unfold? We probably don't have enough inside information to do much, but we are learning how psychopaths operate, and it isn't too hard to see who the major players are.
I'm thinking the Chinese and the Russians are fighting the US for influence in South America. The Japanese might go either way, I don't know much about their culture, but I'd think they might end up siding with the Asians.
Right now, I think that Russia & China are putting a squeeze on the US. If the US is forced to show its hand and default on its debts, then the music stops. I think all the vault doors will lock and no gold will be changing hands.
The Western powers have got to know the probable outcome of this inevitable event and are probably working on some kind of trump card, which might just be simple survival underground, though I would expect most likely if the Western powers go down, they will try to take everyone with them.
John: Your comments made me wonder how scarce gold actually is.
"It is amazing, but the total amount of gold in the world is a surprisingly small quantity.
Here's how you can calculate the total amount that is available.
If you look at a page like this one, or if you look it up in an encyclopedia, you will find that the annual worldwide production of gold is something like 50 million troy ounces per year. Gold has a specific gravity of 19.3, meaning that it is 19.3 times heavier than water. So gold weighs 19.3 kilograms per liter. A liter is a cube that measures 10 centimeters (about 4 inches) on a side. There are 32.15 troy ounces in a kilogram. Therefore, the world produces a cube of gold that is about 4.3 meters (about 14 feet) on each side every year. In other words, all of the gold produced worldwide in one year could just about fit in the average person's living room!
This cube weighs 1,555,210 kilograms (3,110,420 pounds). A recent spot price for gold was $256.10 U.S. -- using that number, all of the gold produced in a year is worth $12,805,000,000. That's a lot of money, but not an unimaginable amount. For example, that's about how much the Pentagon spent launching the GPS satellite system. NASA's budget in 1998 was $13.6 billion.
(John: Double the above figure to get the current $ amounts!)
Figuring out the total amount of gold that has been produced by man is a little harder. To get at some kind of estimate, let's figure that the world has been producing gold at 50 million ounces a year for 200 years. That number is probably a little high, but when you figure that the Aztecs and the Egyptians produced a fair amount of gold for a long time, it's probably not too far off.
Fifty million ounces * 200 years = 10 billion ounces. Ten billion ounces of gold would fit into a cube roughly 25 meters (about 82 feet) on a side. Consider that the Washington Monument measures 55 feet by 55 feet at its base and is 555 feet tall (17 x 17 x 170 m). That means that if you could somehow gather every scrap of gold that man has ever mined into one place, you could only build about one-third of the Washington Monument.
(John: This equates to around 311000 metric tonnes)
Platinum is even more scarce than gold. Only 3.6 million troy ounces are produced per year. Its specific gravity is 21.45, and it was discovered in the 18th century, not in 3,000 B.C. If you assume that the world has produced 3.6 million ounces per year for 50 years to estimate the total worldwide supply, all of the platinum in the world would fit in a cube that is 6.3 meters (about 20 feet) on a side. In other words, all of the platinum in the entire world would easily fit in the average home! "
"At the end of 2001, it is estimated that all the gold ever mined amounts to about 145,000 tonnes."
Going on the howstuffworks density/volume figures, then the WGC volume would be 1/4 of the Washington monument. So the How stuff works website and the World Gold Council's opinion on total gold in the world varies by around 200%....I'll use both as a comparison.
In ounces, there is around 10 billion ounces (howstuffworks) and 4.6 billion ounces (WGC). Value at current spot prices is 5.13 trillion and 2.3 trillion US$ respectively.
According to howstuffworks there's around 6 trillion dollars in cash in the USA and the stockmarket is worth 15 trillion.
And another thing to consider: the stock market crash of 1929-1932 wiped out 80% of the share market value. So looking at the above figures, if debts are called in and the stock market does crash, things don't look too pretty.
Mark: It makes no sense for Russia & China to broadcast their intent to build up gold reserves unless they intend to do so by witholding gold production from their own State mines which they control. This has the double effect of increasing the market price of gold through speculation and further exacerbating the gold supply/demand shortage. It is doubtful they will buy on the open market.
The West has no choice but to hyperinflate, wiping out the savings/pensions of billions while reducing their liability to their creditors (mostly Asia) and their citizens.
So as the saying goes get gold now or get a wheelbarrow. Seriously, try and retain hard assets that can be bartered or traded as I don't see anything good ahead for paper money two years down the road.
NEW YORK - U.S. stocks fell in the year's final trading session on Friday, pushing the Dow Jones industrial average to its first loss since 2002, while both the broad S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite Index booked gains for the third straight year.
The Dow declined 0.61 percent in 2005, breaking its streak of back-to-back gains for 2003 and 2004.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 rose for a third consecutive year, advancing 3 percent -- just one-third of its 9 percent gain last year -- and its smallest annual gain since 1987.
The tech-laced Nasdaq also climbed for a third straight year, rising 1.37 percent, helped by multi-digit gains in bellwethers including Google Inc., up about 117 percent for the year, and Apple Computer Inc., up about 122 percent for 2005, on a split-adjusted basis.
In Friday's trading, though, Google ended the regular session down 1.3 percent, or $5.29, at $414.86, while Apple rose 0.6 percent, or 44 cents, to $71.89.
In the broad S&P 500 index, the best-performing sector in 2005 was energy, with a 29.1 percent gain, buoyed by crude oil's jump to a record price of $70.85 a barrel in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August. The worst-performing S&P 500 sectors were communications, with a 9 percent drop, and consumer discretionary, with a 7.3 percent slide.
"This was not a year for macro-sector bets -- whoever bet on sectors, or indexes other than energy, got extremely frustrated," said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, with $155 billion in assets under management. "This was the year of individual stocks."
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 67.32 points, or 0.62 percent, to end at 10,717.50. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index slipped 6.13 points, or 0.49 percent, to finish at 1,248.29. The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 12.84 points, or 0.58 percent, to close at 2,205.32.
For the week, stocks finished lower, with the Dow down 1.5 percent, the S&P 500 down 1.6 percent and the Nasdaq down about 2 percent.
RALLY BREAKS FOR YIELD CURVE AND OIL
A fourth-quarter rally, which had pushed the S&P 500 up 5 percent for the year on December 14, stalled this week after the two-year U.S. Treasury note's yield rose above the 10-year Treasury note's yield for the first time in five years. This development, called an inversion of the yield curve, has in the past predicted the start of economic recessions.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury note's yield was 4.387 percent at the close of Friday's abbreviated trading session -- or 1 basis point below the two-year note's yield of 4.400 percent.
Adding to investors' concerns, oil prices rebounded above $60 a barrel this week, renewing worries about the impact of higher energy costs on consumer spending and corporate profits.
On Friday, NYMEX February crude rose 72 cents to settle at $61.04 a barrel, after earlier hitting a session high at $61.25.
ENERGY STOCKS HIT A GUSHER
This year's high in oil prices drove up shares of energy companies, with Exxon Mobil Corp., up about 127 percent for the year on a split-adjusted basis. On Friday, Valero ended on the NYSE at $51.60, unchanged from Thursday's close.
"Energy drove most of the year's gains even though we had solid economic and earnings growth," said Michael Metz, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer & Co. "And demand for these companies may still be high at the start of 2006."
RATE INCREASES CAUSE SOME PAIN
Some stocks also were hit in 2005 by an increase in the benchmark fed funds rate for overnight bank loans to 4.25 percent, Metz said.
"Shares in the consumer and financial sectors are the most vulnerable," he said.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer and a Dow component, ended the year down about 11 percent. On Friday, Wal-Mart shares closed at $46.80, down 1.4 percent, or 68 cents.
Volume was lighter than average on Friday, with about 1.11 billion shares changing hands on the NYSE, well below last year's daily average of 1.46 billion. On Nasdaq, about 1.35 billion shares were traded, below last year's daily average of 1.81 billion.
For 2005, the NYSE average daily volume increased to 1.61 billion shares. Nasdaq figures were not immediately available.
About three shares fell on the NYSE for every two that rose, while on Nasdaq, declining stocks outnumbered advancing ones by a ratio of about 4 to 3.
U.S. markets will be closed on Monday in observance of New Year's Day.
NEW YORK (AP) — Investors marked the last trading day of 2005 Friday with the same conundrum they faced all year — trying to find a good reason to buy stocks and coming up short. Stocks fell to their December lows, and the Dow Jones industrials finished the year with a loss.
With little news to spur buying, stocks fell as investors consolidated their meager profits on the year. As a result, the Dow suffered its first down year since 2002, although the other major indexes posted modest gains for 2005.
This year was marked by skyrocketing energy prices, a slowing economy, hot-and-cold inflation threats and the Federal Reserve steadily raising interest rates — all of which made investors nervous over the state of the economy and kept stocks volatile but ultimately little changed since the end of 2004.
Looking ahead, investors hope the Fed will stop raising rates as early as possible in 2006 to avoid slowing the economy unnecessarily, and nervousness on this point has kept stocks in check through December.
"It's really the Fed at this point that's kept the market in check," said Hans Olsen, managing director and chief investment officer at Bingham Legg Advisers. "The historic conversation between the Fed and the markets has become a bit of an argument over whether there's really inflation, and whether we need those rate hikes."
The Dow fell 67.32, or 0.62%, to 10,717.50. The Dow needed to remain above 10,783.01 for a positive 2005.
Broader stock indicators also lost ground. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 6.13, or 0.49%, to 1,248.29, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 12.84, or 0.58%, to 2,205.32.
Bonds moved lower in volatile trading, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rising to 4.40% from 4.36% late Thursday. The inversion of the yield curve this week - with two-year bonds now yielding more than the 10-year - pressured stocks, as many on Wall Street feel that such an inversion augurs a slower economy and a possible recession.
The dollar rose against most major currencies, while gold prices also moved higher.
Energy prices built on the previous session's gains, with a barrel of light crude settling at $61.04, up 72 cents, on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude futures rose 40% in 2005.
Those high energy prices and their impact, real and potential, on consumer spending, inflation and corporate profits kept Wall Street on edge for much of the year, although investors' attitudes remained bullish. Wall Street bought heavily into each rally this year, but while the Dow flirted with the psychologically important 11,000 in both March and November, caution ultimately prevailed each time and investors cut those rallies short in order to preserve profits.
For the year, the Dow fell 0.61%, while the S&P rose 3% and the Nasdaq gained 1.37%.
Much of those gains came in the fourth quarter, when November's rally, prompted by lower energy costs and the appearance of an end in sight to the Fed's interest rate hikes, caused eager investors to jump back into stocks. For the quarter, the Dow rose 1.41%, the S&P climbed 1.59% and the Nasdaq gained 2.5%.
Yet December was a difficult month for stocks and the much-anticipated "Santa Claus" rally never really materialized as concerns once again arose over the Fed's policies and energy prices marched back above $60 per barrel. For the month, the Dow lost 0.82%, the S&P shed 0.1% and the Nasdaq fell 1.23%.
On the final day of trading, there was little corporate news to give stocks a lift. Dow component Citigroup fell 5 cents to $48.53 after media reports said the financial services company was leading a consortium to buy a stake in China's Guangdong bank for $3 billion. Citigroup was also approved to trade the yuan as an interbank foreign exchange market maker. [...]
In summary:
- The Dow Jones industrials ended the week down 165.77, or 1.52%, finishing at 10,717.50. The S&P 500 index lost 20.37, or 1.61%, to close at 1,248.29.
- The Nasdaq fell 44.10, or 1.96%, to close at 2,205.32.
- The Russell 2000 index closed the week down 13.22, or 1.93%, at 673.22.
- The Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index — a free-float weighted index that measures 5,000 U.S. based companies — ended the week at 12,517.69, off 194.00 points from last week. A year ago, the index was 11,971.14.
By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press
Fri Dec 30, 1:47 PM ET
NEW YORK - Hotel prices set wallet-busting records in New York City in 2005 after a long, slow recovery from the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The average daily price of a room in the city hit $292 in November, according to the hospitality industry analysis firm PKF Consulting. Figures for December weren't yet available, but the city is a lock to break its previous record yearlong average of $237 per night, set in 2000.
Prices were high in every corner of town, from the noisy motels jammed into industrial neighborhoods near Kennedy Airport to the palaces near Central Park.
The Days Inn Brooklyn for instance sits on a charmless block in a working-class neighborhood 30 minutes by subway from the nearest tourist spot in Manhattan.
Security glass encloses the front desk. Breakfast is packaged commercial pastry, served from a rack in a closet-sized lobby. The clean but drab rooms overlook train tracks.
Everything about the place says budget travel, except the price. On New Year's Eve, rooms are going for $229 per night.
If the cost of a room deterred some people from visiting, it didn't show.
An estimated 22 million nights were sold at city hotels in 2005, according to city tourism officials, surpassing the 21.4 million last year and the 19.9 million in the year before the terrorist attacks.
Even the $14,000-per-night presidential suite at the Mandarin Oriental, New York was occupied about 75 percent of the time in 2005.
"A-list celebrities," explained hotel spokeswoman Tiana Kartadinata. "New York has a lot of premieres."
New York has never been a cheap place to stay, but today's high prices are remarkable, considering where the city has been.
Tourism dipped significantly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Hotels dropped their prices to an average $198 per night in 2002, and still the city drew millions fewer tourists than it had two years earlier.
Yet, the crisis also prompted a national outpouring of love for the damaged city that may have helped fuel a comeback.
"I think people, for the first time, saw New Yorkers unfiltered," said Christyne Nicholas, president of NYC & Company, the city's convention and visitor's bureau.
"A lot of the stereotypes went away after Sept. 11 of us being rude and obnoxious and unwelcoming," she said. "For the first time, our police officers and our firefighters were a tourist attraction."
There has also been a nationwide recovery. Hotel prices across the country fell after the terror attacks, but grew 4 percent in 2004 and about 5 percent in 2005, according to Smith Travel Research. The average U.S. hotel room now costs $90.80.
In New York, simple laws of supply and demand may have made a difference too.
In recent years, the city's ultra-hot real estate market has prompted a rash of conversions of old hotels into luxury condominiums — most notably, the famed 805-room Plaza Hotel near Central Park.
The overall number of hotel rooms in Manhattan has dwindled by about 1,500 in the past two years, officials said.
Some relief may be on the way. About 5,000 new rooms are expected to open in the city in the coming years, mostly at medium-priced chain hotels being constructed slightly off the beaten path.
"I think we need 1,000 to 1,500 extra rooms per year, just to keep up with the expanding economy," said PKF senior vice president John Fox.
For those travelers on a tight budget, now may be the time to visit. Prices will drop significantly in the next few months as winter sets in and holiday visitors clear out.
For those willing to travel in January and February there are some nice rooms to be had at three-star hotels in Manhattan for relatively bargain basement prices: around $160 per night.
But don't expect the discounts to last long.
At the posh Mandarin Oriental, which opened in the new Time Warner building overlooking Central Park two years ago, the base rate for a room will rise to $725 in 2006. On opening night, the same quarters could be had for $595.
For those with smaller wallets, there is always the Days Inn Brooklyn.
UK - Police are to be given sweeping powers to arrest people for every offence, including dropping litter, failure to wear a seat belt and other minor misdemeanours.
The measures, which come into force on Jan 1, are the biggest expansion in decades of police powers to deprive people of their liberty.
At present, officers can generally arrest people if they suspect them of committing an offence which carries at least five years in prison. They will now have the discretion to detain someone if they suspect any offence and think that an arrest is "necessary".
The civil liberties organisation Liberty said the change represented "a fundamental shift" in power from the public to the police and the state and was open to misuse.
It pointed out that powers to stop people under anti-terrorist legislation, which the public had been reassured would be applied correctly and sparingly, were wrongly used against an elderly heckler at the Labour Party conference in the autumn.
There are also worries that the new arrest laws will create major problems for constables, whose judgment on the "necessity" of an arrest is likely to be routinely challenged in the courts, particularly under human rights legislation.
Officers will have to satisfy themselves of "a person's involvement or suspected involvement or attempted involvement in the commission of a criminal offence" and that there are "reasonable grounds for believing that the person's arrest is necessary".
They will also have the power to take digital photographs of suspects on the street when they have been arrested, detained or given a fixed penalty notice.
The Home Office said the move would save time spent in taking suspects to a police station to be photographed and that it would "greatly reduce the ability of suspects to deny that they were the person in question".
But many people fear that the move will create a vast database of photographs of innocent citizens which could be kept even if the police decide not to take any further action against them.
The Government says that the existing legal framework on arrestable and non-arrestable offences has become "bewilderingly" complex and needs to be simplified.
A Home Office spokesman said yesterday that arrests would not soar because, in addition to the necessity test, many offences would be covered by fixed penalty notices.
Police chiefs have made clear that, although they were concerned about the current system, they did not ask for all offences to be arrestable.
Liberty said that three years ago the Home Office and the Cabinet Office had advocated "a definitive list" of arrestable offences and enhanced training, not a move towards all offences being arrestable.
Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "Officers need firm guidance on how to use these new powers. Nobody wants to live in a society in which every offence results in people being dragged down to the police station."
Edward Garnier, the Tories' spokesman on home affairs, said: "The effect of the new arrangements will need to be monitored closely."
Like Liberty, he referred to the ejection from the Labour conference of Walter Wolfgang, 82, a refugee from Nazi Germany and a Labour Party member since 1948, and how a policeman citing the Terrorism Act detained him when he tried to get back into the hall.
Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister, said: "It is vital that the police are equipped with the powers they need to enable them to do their jobs properly and effectively. The powers need to be updated to reflect modern policing priorities and the changing nature of criminal activity.
"We need to maintain the crucial balance between the powers of the police and an individual's rights.
"The introduction of a single, rationalised power of arrest simplifies arrest powers and requires the police officer to consider the necessity of the arrest."
Comment: Why British citizens aren't taking to the streets to protest the NWO takeover there is beyond us. Everybody is so focused on what is going on in the U.S. that the "experimental petrie dish" of the UK is just growing slime exponentially.
”Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.”
”By next March a central database installed alongside the Police National Computer in Hendon, north London, will store the details of 35 million number-plate "reads" per day. These will include time, date and precise location, with camera sites monitored by global positioning satellites.”
Such tools, once built, naturally, and quite easily expand:
"Already there are plans to extend the database by increasing the storage period to five years and by linking thousands of additional cameras so that details of up to 100 million number plates can be fed each day into the central databank.”
Will the next step be to integrate in face recognition capability? Why not? And what then?
This decision in Britain is especially ironic in light of the headlines this week in the United States, which announce that the Bush administration has been illegally wiretapping unknown numbers of people and, separately, spying on peaceful protesters, all in the name of fighting terrorism. Especially important to keep in mind is the fact that Bush emphatically asserted in 2004 that no one was being wiretapped without a court order. Surveillance tools, when built, are always only going to be used within clear limits. And then…
While it may be justified, and fun, to demonize Bush and his gang, we have to remember that the Bush administration is hardly the first to use illicit means to crush opposition. Many articles this week have made connections to Watergate and other actions of the Nixon administration. But Democratic administrations have certainly engaged in their share of dirty tricks when facing opposition. The infamous Cointelpro program, the attempt to provoke Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide, and many other attacks on protestors and dissidents occurred largely during the Johnson administration.
Over a hundred years ago Lord Acton understood that the danger to liberty does not reside mainly in bad individuals, but in the power available to those in positions of authority: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This is why it is essential to put absolute limits on the tools available to those in authority. If we trust our leaders to use the tools available to them wisely, we are simply being fools. Further, if these tools are used prudently now, there is absolutely no guarantee that future leaders will continue to wield them judiciously. Some tools should never be built, and the total surveillance system being constructed in Britain is one of those.
One can only imagine what will be done with these tools once they are built. Unfortunately, the land of the Magna Carta is rapidly moving toward becoming the land in which privacy is a quaint relic of the past. While the pretense of freedom will undoubtedly remain, real freedom may soon be gone. The next step may very well be to keep tabs on the movements of every individual. GPS systems make such a totally surveillance state a likely possibility, indeed, a certainty, unless current trends are rapidly reversed. Already, such systems are being used to control prisoners. Proposals exist to use them with visitors, to make sure they don’t overstay their visas. How far is it from these uses to a society in which everyone’s location is monitored at all times? Such an outcome may seem outrageous now, but so would this Independent headline have seemed so 10 years ago. The issue of the creeping, or rather galloping, total surveillance state is one of the most important ignored issues of modern times. Modern technology makes possible types of monitoring, and control, undreamed of by Orwell. And, with little discussion or opposition, these techniques are being implemented. If we don’t act now, it will soon be too late to turn the tide.
Cointelpro
COINTELPRO is the FBI acronym for a series of covert action programs directed against domestic groups. In these programs, the Bureau went beyond the collection of intelligence to secret action defined to "disrupt" and "neutralize" target groups and individuals
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm
SUMMARY:
Britain is constructing a system of surveillance cameras that will be able to record and store for years every trip taken by every driver. This step toward the total surveillance state is unwise in light of governments’ habitual tendency to abuse whatever tools are available to them.
Stephen Soldz - ssoldz@bgsp.edu
Copyright Stephen Soldz
Comment: What is happening in Britain is as horrifying as what is happening in the U.S. Have the Brits replaced their spines with wet noodles?
BERLIN -- When the Austrian government passed a law this year allowing police to install closed-circuit surveillance cameras in public spaces without a court order, the Austrian civil liberties group Quintessenz vowed to watch the watchers.
Members of the organization worked out a way to intercept the camera images with an inexpensive, 1-GHz satellite receiver. The signal could then be descrambled using hardware designed to enhance copy-protected video as it's transferred from DVD to VHS tape.
The Quintessenz activists then began figuring out how to blind the cameras with balloons, lasers and infrared devices.
And, just for fun, the group created an anonymous surveillance system that uses face-recognition software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose images are recorded.
Quintessenz members Adrian Dabrowski and Martin Slunksy presented their video-surveillance research at the 22nd annual Chaos Communication Congress here this week. Five hundred hackers jammed into a meeting room for a presentation that fit nicely into CCC's 2005 theme of "private investigations."
Slunksy pointed out that searching for special strings in Google, such as axis-cgi/, will return links that access internet-connected cameras around the world. Quintessenz developers entered these Google results into a database, analyzed the IP addresses and set up a website that gives users the ability to search by country or topic -- and then rate the cameras.
"You can use this to see if you are being watched in your daily life," said Dabrowski.
The conference, hosted by Germany's Chaos Computer Club, featured many discussions on data interception and pushing back the unprecedented onslaught of surveillance technologies.
Even the Dutch, once known as hacker-friendly, politically progressive Europeans, are now fearful and demanding more cameras on their streets, said Rop Gonggrijp, founder of Dutch ISP Xs4All.
Gonggrijp says the Dutch chief of police has announced the intention to store large amounts of surveillance data and mine it to determine who to pressure and question. "People are screaming for more control," said Gonggrijp.
Dutch journalist Brenno de Winter warned that the European Parliament's support for data retention doesn't ensure security, and makes citizens vulnerable to automated traffic analysis of who communicates with whom through phone calls and internet connections. "What we have seen is a system that fails because we miss out on too much information, and even if we have all that information, it doesn't give us the right information and it is easy to circumvent," said de Winter.
CCC member and security researcher Frank Rieger said hackers should provide secure communications for political and social movements and encourage the widespread use of anonymity technologies. He said people on the other side of the camera need to be laughed at and shamed.
"It must not be cool anymore to have access to this data," said Rieger, who argued that Western societies are becoming democratically legitimized police states ruled by an unaccountable elite. "We have enough technical knowledge to turn this around; let's expose them in public, publish everything we know about them and let them know how it feels to be under surveillance."
The four-day Chaos Computer Congress is meeting near Alexanderplatz in the former East Berlin, where more than a half-million people rallied for political reform five days before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In his keynote address, Joichi Ito, general manager of international operations for Technorati, warned that the internet could itself become a walled-in network controlled by the International Telecommunication Union, Microsoft and telecommunications companies.
Ito said these restrictions would stifle free speech and the ability to question authority without retribution. "An open network is more important for democracy than the right to bear arms and the right to vote," said Ito. "Voice is more important than votes."
Comment: Attaboy, Austrians! Kick out Arnie and foil the snoopers! Why is it that countries that were occupied by the Nazis and/or Communists seem to have bigger cojones when it comes to resisting the New World Order of the Bush Reich? Go HERE for the answer.
Interior Minister -- and would-be President -- Nicolas Sarkozy has created a sensation in cyberspace. Expect more pols to follow
Nicolas Sarkozy, the law-and-order Interior Minister who wants to be France's next President, rarely passes up a chance to speak before an audience. So when Loïc Le Meur, one of the country's most widely read bloggers, proposed doing a podcast interview with Sarkozy, the answer was mais, oui.
The Dec. 22 interview has created a sensation in the French blogosophere. It has attracted more than 50,000 views on Le Meur's blog, www.loiclemeur.com, and has been picked up by scores of other French blogs. Although the podcast is in French, Le Meur has an English-language version of his blog that summarizes the interview.
Not only is it the first-ever podcast by a French political leader, it also marks a startling break with customary etiquette, as Sarkozy and Le Meur address each other with the familiar "tu" rather than "vous" during their 30-minute meeting. "Bravo!" read many of the hundreds of viewer commentaries posted on Le Meur's blog over the past few days. Many are heralding the interview as a watershed event, showing that French politicians can no longer afford to ignore the growing importance of nontraditional media (see BW, 7/11/05, "Let them Eat Cake -- and Blog About It").
"FOR MY OWN ENJOYMENT." Still, the interview in the Interior Ministry's elegantly appointed drawing room didn't generate any headline news. Le Meur and Sarkozy chatted amiably about the Internet and podcasting, and Sarkozy described how, as head of the ruling UMP party, he has used e-mail appeals to boost party membership. On a more controversial subject, Sarkozy defended his handling of the recent rioting in French suburbs. But his comments closely tracked what he has said in other recent newspaper and TV interviews.
Le Meur says some journalists have criticized him for going too easy on Sarkozy. But he says, "I didn't want to be confrontational. I did this mainly for my own enjoyment, and to learn more myself." Moreover, Le Meur counters that many French journalists have lost objectivity in their coverage of Sarkozy. A recent interview with Sarkozy in the left-wing newspaper Libération, for example, included the question, "Weren't you ashamed of the way you responded to the riots?"
If the podcast interview was a coup for Le Meur, it also could boost Sarkozy's presidential ambitions. A poll by the Ipsos survey group taken in mid-December, a month after the rioting ended, showed Sarkozy's approval rating had dipped 8%, to 53%. Although that still puts him ahead of other potential presidential candidates, including Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the poll showed a steep 18% decline in Sarkozy's support among young voters. Sarkozy's critics, including celebrities such as rapper Joey Starr and filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz, who are popular among young French people, have said the Interior Minister's harsh rhetoric and policing methods were partly to blame for the riots.
"I AM GOOD ADVERTISING." Now, Sarkozy is mounting a counteroffensive among French bloggers, who are mainly 25-years-and-under. He recently posted a sharp retort on Kassovitz' blog after the filmmaker called him a "little Napoleon." Sarkozy told Kassovitz that his remarks were "caricaturist" and invited the director to engage in "debate and exchange." In the Le Meur interview, Sarkozy said some celebrities had attacked him "because I am good advertising for them, they all have a film or a CD to sell."
Le Meur says he has no ambition to become a journalist or political commentator. But he has already been contacted by other presidential hopefuls who are interested in setting up interviews. Certainly, there are no technical hurdles. The Sarkozy podcast is crisp and clear, thanks to three friends of Le Meur's, all amateur podcasters, who came along with him to the interview to handle the audio and video. If this keeps up, Le Meur's blog could soon become a must-read for France's political elite.
BERLIN - Germans are leaving their country in record numbers but unlike previous waves of migrants who fled 19th century poverty or 1930s Nazi terror, these modern day refugees are trying to escape a new scourge -- unemployment.
Flocking to places as far away as the United States, Canada and Australia as well as Norway, the Netherlands and Austria more than 150,000 Germans packed their bags and left in 2004 -- the greatest exodus in any single year since the late 1940s.
High unemployment that lingers at levels of more than 20 percent in some parts of Germany and dim prospects for any improvement are the key factors behind the migration. In the 15 years since German unification more than 1.8 million Germans have left.
"It's hard for me to even imagine any more what it's like to have so much unemployment," said Karin Manske, 45, who moved to the United States with her two children eight years ago to start her own business as a consultant.
"It's hard to fathom because Germans are such skilled workers," Manske said in an interview with Reuters in Los Angeles. "I love the adventurous spirit and won't go back. You can start a business on a shoe string and work hard to succeed."
There are an estimated 70,000 Germans living in southern California, many of whom have arrived in recent years. Earlier tides of emigrants fleeing the Nazis went to Hollywood while post-war waves of Germans filled jobs as skilled artisans in nearby Orange County towns like Anaheim.
"Some of my friends moved to Australia, to Switzerland or London and I came to the U.S., where I'm definitely much better off than I would have been in Germany," said Wolfram Knoeringer, 33, an German architect who moved to Los Angeles in 2002.
"It's not the best time for architects in Germany," he told Reuters, referring to a flat economy, a stagnant population and shrinking building sector. "There are tons of architects in Berlin with little to do. LA is a far more interesting place."
EAST GERMANS TAKE OVER ALPS
According to the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden, the 150,667 Germans who left last year went to 200 countries -- the United States was the top destination with 12,976, following by Switzerland (12,818), Austria (8,532) and Britain (7,842).
Other countries that took in Germany's poor, their tired and their hungry were France, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium.
"There are actually far more Germans moving abroad than the numbers reflected in the official statistics," said Klaus Bade, a University of Osnabrueck professor who studies migration.
"The poor chance of finding jobs at home is the main reason they're leaving," Bade told Stern magazine in a cover story that gave Germans useful tips on how to emigrate.
It's a remarkable change of fortune for Germany, which thanks to the post-war "Economic Miracle" of the 1950s and 1960s was a magnet for millions of foreigners who trekked there from Turkey, Italy and other poor countries in search of jobs.
The main exodus from Germany has been from its formerly communist East, which has been depressed and contracting since just after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The East's population has shrunk to 14.7 million from 16 million since 1990.
A Europe Job Center in Magdeburg and a government agency in Bonn known as ZAV have helped tens of thousands of Germans find jobs abroad, mainly in neighboring countries.
The numbers leaving Germany are modest considering there are nearly 5 million unemployed, even though the trend seems to be gaining pace. There has been scant economic growth in Germany for years and property prices have barely changed in a decade.
Annika Richter left home in Dresden to work as a cook and bookkeeper in a Liechtenstein ski resort. Her Saxon accent stands in contrast to the melody of the local Swiss German dialect.
But her easily distinguishable language blends in with the staff at her Alpine hotel because most of them are also east Germans, now seen as among Europe's most mobile workers.
"I didn't want to work in Germany because this type of job is looked down on," said Richter, 34. "Hotel service jobs have no status in Germany. I'm happy here. I want to work here, save money and then travel the world. I'll probably come back here."
TO AMSTERDAM
Germans have been sailing, running and flying away from their home for centuries. Millions of 19th century emigrants escaped poverty while later waves fled Adolf Hitler's Nazis or were eager to leave the post-war ruins behind.
Some countries, such as Australia, are now actively recruiting Germans with skills at their embassies in Berlin. In a bizarre twist of fate, construction companies in northern Italy have recently been hiring Germans for low skill jobs.
Yet many of those who leave say they have no regrets. Bernhard Klug went to Amsterdam in February after losing his job at his advertising agency at home.
"Sure there are some things I miss but I am very happy here," said Klug, a 35-year-old designer taking evening Dutch lessons. "Work is less stressful, people leave on time, and the atmosphere is much more relaxed and informal among colleagues."
Klug doesn't miss his homeland.
"In the Netherlands, there isn't the constant moaning you have in Germany," he said. "I'm staying here, at least for now."
Susanne Lutterbach moved to Zurich two years ago for a job.
"It was easier to find work in Switzerland," said Lutterbach, 25, who found a marketing position at a computer company. "I was able to start right away after I graduated."
Dagmar Hovestadt had a good job at a Berlin television station but grew bored and quit six years ago, moved to Los Angeles and now works as a freelance journalist.
"People said I was crazy," she said. "I always dreamedabout living in California. The mentality is about as opposite from Berlin as it gets. It's a tough working environment and you're on your own. But I really wanted to get away from Germany."
Conal Urquhart in Gaza City and Sam Jones
Saturday December 31, 2005
The Guardian
The British family held hostage for three days after being kidnapped in Gaza were freed last night after 18 hours of secret negotiations. Following their release, shortly after 8pm, a previously unknown faction calling itself Brigades of the Mujahideen - Jerusalem, said they were responsible for the seizure of Kate Burton, 24, her father Hugh, 73, and mother Helen, 55.
In a video released to media, a masked gunman read out a message standing next to Ms Burton, who appeared with her hands behind her back. "We have decided to pardon the three Britons as a gesture of goodwill in return for a seriousness in answering our demands," the gunman said.
According to reports, the family were driven by their captors from Khan Yunis and passed on to the Palestinian police while British and Palestinian officials waited for them outside their Gaza hotel. Later the three were being taken to Jerusalem in the care of British officials.
The family was kidnapped on Wednesday in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. British consular officials said they believed that the family had come to no harm but were anxious that Mr and Mrs Burton should have a medical examination as soon as possible.
Security officials believe the kidnapping was meant to be a veiled warning to the Palestinian Authority by Palestinian gunmen. In the video, the gunman attacked Britain for its historical involvement in the region. The gunman went on to threaten foreign officials at work in Gaza if the international community did not rein in Israeli military activity. Israel is regularly shelling the north of the Gaza Strip to suppress the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel. Dozens of explosions were again heard in Gaza City last night.
With large numbers of international observers expected to arrive in Gaza in the coming weeks to monitor the Palestinian elections on January 25, the gunmen's threat may prevent their deployment damaging the integrity of the election process.
The Gaza Strip has been plagued by small groups taking the law into their own hands for economic or political advantage. The PA, which has large but inefficient security services, has appeared unable to react to the challenge of taking over complete control of the Gaza Strip since the departure of Israeli soldiers and settlers in September.
The Burton family were on a tour of Gaza where Ms Burton has worked for the past year. Her parents, who are British but live in Brussels, were visiting their daughter for Christmas and had spent Christmas Day in the Jerusalem area. On Wednesday, the family went on a trip through the historic and political sites of Gaza.
They were abducted by three masked and armed men as they left the Rafah border terminal in the southern Gaza Strip. They were taken from their car, which they shared with a driver and a guide, and driven away.
A friend contacted Ms Burton by mobile telephone shortly after the abduction and she told him that they had been kidnapped but not harmed. The kidnapping of foreigners in Gaza is a relatively common occurrence but the victims are normally freed within hours. The kidnappers have almost always demanded jobs or favours from the Palestinian Authority and treated their captives with apologetic kindness. The kidnappers contacted the Palestinian authorities early yesterday morning to arrange the release of their captives.
Their release follows a chorus of demands for their freedom from family, humanitarian workers in the region, Palestinian political figures and even a rare public appeal from the militant group al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade.
JAKARTA -- Four people were killed and several others injured when a bomb, believed to be a hand-made, exploded in Palu, in central sulawesi province of Indonesia, on Saturday morning.
Both the dead and injured victims have yet to be identified but they have been evacuated to the nearby hospitals, Antara news agency reported.
The local police anti-bomb (Jihandak) have arrived and are combing the area, the only place selling pork on Pulau Sulawesi Street, to confirm another victims.
Tens of policemen have also been deployed in the location.
By PATRICK QUINN
Associated Press Writer
December 31, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two more U.S. soldiers were killed in
Iraq as the year wound down Friday, putting the American military death toll at 841 so far — just five short of 2004's lost lives despite political progress and dogged efforts to quash the insurgency.
In Baghdad, hundreds of cars lined up at gas stations as word spread that Iraq's largest oil refinery shut down two weeks ago because of threats of insurgent attacks. Nearly three years after the U.S.-led invasion, a fuel crisis again threatens to cripple a country with the world's third-largest proven oil reserves.
Violence went on unabated Friday, with at least 17 people killed in shootings, mortar attacks and a suicide car bombing in Baghdad. In the most serious incident, police said nine people were killed in a drive-by shooting — apparently because they were drinking alcohol in public. Two Iraqi Army captains were also gunned down in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, as they drove home.
A senior Sudanese diplomat said his country closed its embassy in Baghdad in an effort to win the release of six kidnapped employees — including one diplomat.
"A statement was issued by the Sudanese government to close the embassy in Iraq to win the release of our kidnapped citizens," Charge d'affairs Mohamed Ahmed Khalil told The Associated Press. He added that the embassy's 12 employees would leave Monday.
Al-Qaida in Iraq had threatened Thursday to kill five Sudanese on Saturday unless the country removed its diplomatic mission from Iraq.
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry reported on Dec. 24 that six of its embassy employees were kidnapped — including the mission's second secretary, Abdel Moneam Mohammad Tom. It was not clear if the al-Qaida statement was referring to the same group.
The two new deaths of U.S. military personnel were announced Friday by the American military. A bomb killed one soldier when it struck his vehicle in Baghdad on Friday, while the second soldier was shot and killed in the western city of Fallujah.
Their deaths brought the number of U.S. military members killed so far in 2005 to 841, of whom 64 died in December. A total of 846 troops died in 2004 and 485 in 2003. The worst month in 2005 was January with 106 fatalities, followed by November with 96 and August with 85.
The United States hopes that as more Iraqi police and army forces are trained, they will slowly take over responsibility for security from American troops. Much of that expectation hinges on the ability of Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups to form a broad-based government that will have the legitimacy to deflate the Sunni Arab-led insurgency.
In Beiji, some 155 miles north of Baghdad and near
Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, the deteriorating security situation led authorities to shut down Iraq's largest oil refinery Dec. 18, former oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum told the AP.
Al-Uloum said the facility "is considered one of the vital refineries in Iraq" and produces about 2 million gallons of gas a day.
As word of the shutdown spread through the country, abut 1,000 vehicles waited at one of Baghdad's biggest gas stations, known as the Jindi al-Majhoul, or Unknown Soldier station.
Ahmed Khalaf, 33, said he left his home at dawn and was still in line at noon. He expected to wait a few more hours before getting fuel.
"After the rise in gas prices, now we have a gas shortage," he said. "I left my work early, and I don't think I will have the opportunity to return to work today because of this long line. Dark will come soon and I cannot work at night."
Ali Moussa, a 51-year-old tanker truck driver, said he and his colleagues were working in a dangerous situation.
"We demand that the government provide security and protection," he said. "The Beiji storage tanks are full and there isn't any shortage of gas there. The problem is that drivers are too afraid to go there unless they are protected."
Baghdad in particular has been suffering from a shortage of refined fuel, much of which is already imported because of the country's diminished refining capacity. A number of demonstrations have already been held around Iraq because of a Dec. 19 increase in gas prices.
At the time, the price of imported and super gasoline was raised from about 13 cents a gallon to about 65 cents a gallon.
The oil crisis has already cost one job, that of al-Uloum, the oil minister, who was given a 30-day vacation last Wednesday and replaced with Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi. Al-Uloum had opposed a recent decision to raise prices for fuel and cooking oil as much as ninefold.
Iraq's proven oil reserves, estimated at about 110 billion barrels, are the world's third largest after Saudi Arabia and Canada. Analysts have predicted that Iraq's oil production will average about 1.8 million barrels per day this year, about 10 percent less than 2004 levels of about 2 million barrels — and just over half the 1990 level. One reason is frequent insurgent attacks on pipelines and refineries.
Comment: Well, it looks like 2006 may be an even worse year for Iraqis than 2005...
By ROD McGUIRK
Associated Press
Sat Dec 31, 2:48 AM ET
SYDNEY, Australia - Australians' support for the
Iraq war has fallen in the past year, with two-thirds now saying the war was not worthwhile, according to results of a poll published Saturday.
The survey, conducted by Newspoll and published in The Australian newspaper, was bad news for Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch U.S. ally who has vowed to keep Australia's 1,320 troops in and around Iraq as long as they are needed.
In the poll, 66 percent of Australians said they believed the war was not worthwhile, up from 58 percent a year ago, the newspaper said. Just 27 percent believed the war was worthwhile, compared with 32 percent a year earlier.
Among supporters of Howard's center-right government, those who back the war had dropped from 50 percent to 43 percent in the past year.
The government must soon decide whether the task force's deployment will be extended beyond its initial 12-month commitment that ends in May 2006. Howard sent 2,000 troops to support U.S. and British forces in the Iraq invasion in March 2003.
Australia's involvement in the war has provoked the largest peace rallies in the country since the Vietnam War, but Howard was re-elected with an increased majority in 2004 elections.
The Newspoll was based on a national random telephone survey of 1,200 adults conducted last weekend. It had a 3 percentage point margin or error.
With a copy of the Quran and a Palestinian flag in his trunk, a Jordanian-turned-U.S. citizen crashed his car into a Home Depot in Arizona where he formerly worked, igniting an explosive blaze in the stores' paint section and causing $1 million in damage.
The Dec. 18 attack in Chandler, Ariz., by 24-year-old Ali R. Warrayat was a carefully planned "personal statement," the East Valley Tribune of Mesa, Ariz., reported.
Warrayat, a student at Arizona State University in Mesa, had his car radio blasting with Arabic music to drown out the yells of employee he might encounter, the paper said.
After crashing through the doors at 6 a.m., Warrayat headed for the paint department and slammed the vehicle into the flammable goods. He jumped out of the car, ignited the blaze with a lighter then headed for the exit, sweeping merchandise from the shelves as he went. He then sat on the curb outside, waiting for police to arrest him.
When police arrived, however, he struggled with officers and refused to cooperate when asked if he understood his Miranda rights.
Warrayat replied in a foreign language and when asked if he understood English, said, "Do you speak Arabic?"
He is being held in a county jail in Phoenix without bond on suspicion of aggravated assault and arson.
A Home Depot official told police the company will consider placing armed guards at all of its stores in the area if Warrayat is released from jail.
Warrayat worked as a paint stocker in the Chandler store six months ago but was transferred to another Home Depot location after difficulties with a supervisor. He told police he was angry at the store management about not getting a proper raise.
He also said he was mad at the United States for proposing a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border and wanted to make the country "more free."
A day after the incident, Warrayat asked reporters to come to the jail to hear him make a statement, but when they arrived, he refused to speak, gazing at the ceiling and the floor with his lips pursed, the Tribune said.
Friends described Warrayat as deeply religious, with a Quran hanging from his rearview mirror; and in police statements, the 24-year-old referred to his religion often, the paper reported.
A co-worker and friend said Warrayat was "gentleman-like and respectable with everyone."
"When I saw him on TV, he did not look like the Ali that I know," Joaquin Bustamante told the Tribune. "He was a hard worker and worked circles around everybody, and he was a very private person."
Warrayat told police he had a swastika tattooed in red and black on the bottom of his foot after the Nazi symbol was painted on a mosque where he prays. Islam considers stepping on things disrespectful, he explained.
Police seized a computer at the house he shares with his parents, finding images of men lighting Molotov cocktails and a cartoon of two bloodied and dead children with a Middle Eastern flag in the background.
By ADRIAN SAINZ
Associated Press Writer
December 30, 2005
MIAMI - Tropical Storm Zeta formed Friday in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, another installment in a record-breaking hurricane season that officially ended last month.
Zeta, the 27th storm of the season, formed Friday about 1,000 miles south-southwest of the Azores islands, according to an advisory posted on the National Hurricane Center's Web site. It posed no immediate threat to land.
The center said it would send out a full advisory later Friday. Tropical storms have winds of at least 39 mph.
It was not immediately known if Dec. 30 was the latest date for the formation of a tropical storm in the Atlantic. But earlier this month, Hurricane Epsilon became only the fifth hurricane to form in December in 154 years of record-keeping. Hurricanes form when their winds exceed 74 mph.
Zeta is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet, which forecasters turned to after they used up — for the first time — their list of 21 proper names for storms. The record for tropical storms and hurricanes in a season had been 21, set in 1933 before such storms were regularly named.
The 2005 Atlantic storm season, which officially ended Nov. 30, included 14 hurricanes, including Epsilon.
One of the hurricanes, Katrina, destroyed large portions of Louisiana and Mississippi last August in the most costly disaster in U.S. history. Hurricanes Dennis, Rita and Wilma also caused significant damage in the U.S.
Forecasters have said that hurricane seasons are going to be more active than usual for at least another decade — and possibly as long as 50 years.
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press Writer
Dec 30, 2005
VIENNA, Austria - Europe's second snowstorm this week piled drifts onto railway tracks and roads Friday, slowing buses, trains and trams and stranding motorists. At least two people were killed in mass pileups and a week of icy weather was blamed for dozens of other deaths. In Poland, police said 23 people had frozen to death in recent days, with the last victim found Friday.
Heavy snowfall blocked roads in Poland's Katowice and Bielsko-Biala area in the south, and blanketed the Baltic coastal city of Gdansk, causing traffic jams and blocking city streets.
Swirling snow and thick fog enveloped most of Italy, and Florence recorded nearly 10 inches of snow _ the most it has seen in two decades. Temperatures in northern Italy dropped as low as -17 Celsius (1.4 Fahrenheit). A 22-year-old homeless man was found dead, apparently of exposure, in Rome's main railway station Wednesday.
Forty vehicles piled up on icy asphalt on Hungary's busiest motorway, killing an 8-year-old boy and injuring 11 other people _ one of several mass crashes involving about 60 cars. Police said the accidents closed the interstate M1 connecting Budapest with Vienna.
Another 40-vehicle accident on a highway in neighboring Slovakia killed one person and left 22 injured, the TASR news agency reported.
Blizzards, ice and high winds prompted a nationwide weather warning in the Netherlands, and Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, Europe's fourth- largest, was preparing to shut down some of its runways as thick cloud cover blew in.
Wind-driven snow in Austria piled high drifts onto railway tracks and left motorways treacherous, causing train delays and dozens of traffic accidents.
Utility crews in Austria's eastern Burgenland province reported that electricity had been restored by early Friday after winds toppled snow-laden trees onto power masts. Chain-equipped fire trucks patrolled roads, pulling dozens of vehicles out of ditches.
Two people died in France, apparently of exposure. Authorities in the western city of Le Mans reported the death of a 52-year-old woman on welfare who slept in a garden shed, and a homeless man was reported dead in Lyon.
With snow falling steadily in France, the national weather service issued road and weather warnings for 70 of the country's 80 regions. Some highways were closed and temperatures of -26 degrees Celsius (-15 Fahrenheit) were recorded in the eastern town of Mouthe, one of the country's cold spots. The storms left 110,000 homes without power in northern France and forced delays of up to two hours to international destinations after high-speed trains reduced speeds for safety reasons.
To the east, swirling, drifting snow led Czech authorities to contemplate closing several border crossings into Poland. In the eastern parts of the Czech Republic and in Slovakia, some main roads were shut to traffic, and long lines of vehicles formed on others.
In Berlin, most streets were buried in snow leaving residents picking their way though drifts and snow banks. Trains across much of the country were running irregularly, if at all.
In Switzerland, skies were clear _ and temperatures icy. The mercury plummeted to -35.9 Celsius (-32.6 Fahrenheit) overnight in the town of La Brevine in the Jura mountains for the country's coldest temperature this year.
In Britain, the mercury moved upward after days of subfreezing weather, and heavy snow turned to rain.
But temperatures as low as -12 Celsius (10.4 Fahrenheit) earlier in the week caused at least one death _ a man in his 40s in the town of West Bromwich. Early Friday afternoon, police supplied hot drinks to dozens of people trapped by drifts on a highway in East Yorkshire in northern England.
Martin Wainwright
Saturday December 31, 2005
The Guardian
The snowy aftermath to Christmas largely melted away yesterday in a slushy mess and driving rain, but only after claiming at least three more lives as morning blizzards buried cars on east coast roads.
Dozens of drivers in East Yorkshire had to be dug free by firefighters from cars trapped in freezing drifts on roads crossing the Wolds, where exposed stretches saw the wind pile snow three feet deep.
Jeeps were used to rescue people from 200 vehicles stranded at Arras Hill near Market Weighton and there was renewed chaos in Kent, where snowfalls coincided with the morning rush hour at Ashford, Canterbury and Dartford. One man died in the Market Weighton blizzard and a woman was killed in a pile-up on the A1 at Torness in East Lothian.
An 84-year-old man died in a six-car pile-up in North Lanarkshire on icy road surfaces.
Among scores of non-fatal accidents, two drivers were treated for serious whiplash injuries after their cars skidded off an icebound stretch of the M20 at Maidstone in Kent.
Flights from some regional airports were affected. Services to Dublin and Belfast were cancelled at Newcastle airport, which also saw six international flights seriously delayed.
Stansted airport closed its main runway for a time after clearing crews were overwhelmed by snow, and two incoming Ryanair holiday flights were diverted to Bournemouth and long coach connections home. Luton airport was also badly affected by freezing temperatures.
Police and motoring organisations repeated calls for people not to drive unless necessary, and to go equipped with warm clothing, a shovel and mobile phone if they had to make a journey. The Highways Agency said: "Road users should also be aware of the risk of crosswinds and maintain additional distance from the vehicle in front, not just in the snow but when the rain comes later this afternoon and evening."
The Arctic snap has also hit much of northern Europe, with heavy snowstorms and ice causing a string of fatal road crashes. Among the victims were two British travellers who died near Lille. Their names have not yet been released while relatives are informed.
Police in West Bromwich are meanwhile preparing another appeal for information about a rough sleeper who was found frozen to death in a doorway at the top of the town hall's steps.
The PA WeatherCentre said that warmer weather would establish a hold over the weekend. "It is going to turn very wet with a belt of warm, tropical air coming in from the Atlantic," said a spokesman. "Rain will be heavy at times, with most of the snow getting washed away."
The cold spell has taken December's temperatures half a degree below the average, but 2005 keeps its place as one of the five hottest years since modern record keeping began in 1921.
PANAMA CITY, Dec. 30 (Xinhuanet) -- An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale rattled Panama on Friday afternoon, but no major damage or injuries were immediately reported.
The quake was centered in the Pacific Ocean, 335 kilometers southwest of Panama City, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center. It was felt across western Panama.
Panamanian officials said there was no immediate fear that the quake could lead to a tsunami.
BEIJING -- An outbreak of Asia Type One foot-and-mouth disease has occurred in Changqing District of Jinan City, capital of east China's Shandong Province, China's Ministry of Agriculture announced on Friday.
Altogether 91 cattle in the farm which reported the outbreak have been culled by the provincial veterinary bureau, the Ministrysaid.
Some cattle on a farm in Changqing District developed symptoms of bad appetite and fever on Dec. 6, and 48 cattle had fallen ill by Dec. 25.
The provincial veterinary bureau reported the case as a suspected outbreak of the foot-and-mouth disease after initial tests on Dec. 26. It was confirmed by the state laboratory for foot-and-mouth disease control on Dec. 29.
Apart from culling the entire herd which the sick cattle belonged to, the Shandong provincial government and the Ministry of Agriculture also ordered an immediate disinfection and quarantine of the outbreak site, as well as a thorough inoculationof all vulnerable animals in the region.
Till death do us part? An unusual wedding ceremony was held in the southern resort town of Eilat on Wednesday, as Sharon Tendler, a 41-years-old Jewish millionaire from London married her beloved Cindy, a 35-years-old dolphin, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Thursday.
The groom, a resident of the Eilat dolphin reef, met Tendler 15 years ago, when she first visited the resort. The British rock concert producer took a liking to the dolphin and has made a habit of traveling to Eilat two or three times a year and spending time with her underwater sweetheart.
"The peace and tranquility underwater, and his love, would calm me down," the excited bride said after the wedding.
After a years-long romance, Tendler decided to embark on the highly unusual path of tying the knot with her beloved dolphin. Last week, she approached Cindy's trainer Maya Zilber with the extraordinary request.
Zilber accepted the challenge and "talked the idea over with the fellow," who apparently consented.
'I'm not a pervert'
And so on Wednesday afternoon, the thrilled bride, wearing a white dress, walked down the dock before hundreds of astounded visitors and kneeled down before her groom, who was waiting in the water.
Cindy, escorted by his fellow best-men dolphins, swam over to Tendler and she hugged him, whispered sweet nothings in his ear, and kissed him in front of the cheering crowd.
After the ceremony was sealed with some mackerels, Tendler was tossed into the water by her friends so that she could swim with her new husband.
"I'm the happiest girl on earth," the bride said as she chocked back tears of emotion. "I made a dream come true, and I am not a pervert," she stressed.
Tendler said she and her newly wed husband will probably spend their wedding night bowling.
"But what kind of children would they have?" one of the children in the crowd asked his father.
Comment: It is impossible for Jews and non-Jews to marry in Israel. If an Israeli and a Palestinian marry, the Palestinian has no right to come and live in Irsrael.
However, it is possible for a Jewish woman to marry a dolphin.
WASHINGTON - Pregnant women coached through their first delivery do not fare much better than those who just do what feels natural, according to a study released on Friday.
Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern found that women who were told to push 10 minutes for every contraction gave birth 13 minutes faster than those who were not given specific instructions.
But they said the difference has little impact on the overall birth, which experts say can take up to 14 hours on average.
"There were no other findings to show that coaching or not coaching was advantageous or harmful," said lead author Dr. Steven Bloom, the interim head of obstetrics and gynecology at the Dallas-based university.
"Oftentimes, it's best for the patient to do what's more comfortable for her," he added.
Bloom and his team studied 320 first-time mothers who had simple pregnancies and did not receive epidural anesthesia.
About half were given specific instructions by certified nurse-midwives during the second stage of labor, when they were fully dilated. The rest were told to "do what comes naturally."
On average, coached mothers trimmed the final stage to 46 minutes compared to 59 minutes, according to the study sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health.
Women in both groups experienced about the same number of forceps use, Caesarean deliveries and skin tears, among other complications.
The results were published in the January issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Less clear was whether extra pushing encouraged by a coach could lead to bladder trouble.
In an earlier study, the researchers tested bladder function in 128 of the mothers three months later.
While such problems usually resolve on their own over time, women who had been coached had a smaller bladder capacity and felt the urge to urinate more often, they previously found.
Senior author Dr. Kenneth Leveno, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the school, said it was still not clear if the bladder problems could lead to long-term complications and more studies are needed.
"We don't want to alarm patients about this," he said.
Friday's finding that coaching "confers neither benefit nor harm might be pre-empted if it is confirmed that coaching has deleterious long-term effects," the study concluded.
By ELISABETH GOODRIDGE
Associated Press
Fri Dec 30, 9:40 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Contaminated dog food which was sold in 23 states killed nearly two dozen dogs and sickened 18 more, the
Food and Drug Administration said Friday.
The deaths and illnesses sparked an FDA investigation into the pet food made by the Diamond Pet Food Company at its Gaston, S.C., manufacturing plant.
The FDA said so far 23 animal deaths have been linked to the pet food.
The company, based in Meta, Mo., issued a recall of 19 varieties of dog and cat food on Dec. 21 because some of the pet food made at the Gaston facility was discovered to contain aflatoxin.
Aflatoxin, a naturally occurring chemical that comes from a fungus sometimes found on corn and other crops, can cause severe liver damage. Aflatoxin poisoning can cause sluggishness, a lack of appetite and in severe cases severe vomiting, fever and jaundice.
The recalled pet food was sold in 23 states under the brand names Diamond, Country Value and Professional, and bears the date codes of March 1, 2007, through June 11, 2007. Consumers are asked to immediately stop using the product.
Last week, Tony Caver, the state veterinarian in South Carolina, said that state has five presumed cases linked to aflatoxin, including three fatalities.
Seven dogs from the Rochester, N.Y., area were being treated at Cornell University Hospital for Animals for liver disease and failure after eating contaminated food, said university spokeswoman Sabina Lee. An area veterinarian discovered the link after three dogs died in the area, she said.
In a Dec. 20 press release, the company said it had notified distributors to hold up the further sale of Diamond pet food that had used corn. The next day it ordered the recall.
"To ensure we got all the affected product or potential to be affected, we cast a very wide net with the recall," Diamond spokesman Jim Fallon said Friday. He said the company is conducting tests and has set up a consumer information center, open seven days a week, to handle consumer questions.
"We are working with customers and their vets to confirm a link between the pet food and the pet's illnesses," he said. "Our whole focus is saving pets' lives and doing the right thing."
The company said it was analyzing retained samples of all of the affected pet food products in Gaston in an attempt to isolate specific lot numbers that were impacted and provide the information to distributors, retailers and customers.
According to the company, the pet food was distributed to stores in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Vermont, and Virginia.
The FDA said some of the recalled product had been exported to at least 29 countries, including several in the
European Union. Those countries have been notified, the agency said.